


Coldest Burns the Brightest Blue

by brethilaki



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Aromantic Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, Autism Spectrum, Autistic Keith (Voltron), Background Relationships, Backstory, Bilingual Lance (Voltron), Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Canon-Typical Violence, Demisexual Lance, Eventual Sex, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gay Keith (Voltron), Grey-Romantic Keith, Korean Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) Has Two Moms, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Pining, Pining Lance (Voltron), Plotty, Season/Series 02, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Texan Keith (Voltron), Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, klance, probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2018-11-05 09:03:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11010255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brethilaki/pseuds/brethilaki
Summary: Keith never stopped feeling the energy that drew him to the Blue Lion in the first place, only now it gives him uncomfortably intimate glimpses of the inside of Lance's head.Lance, meanwhile, is dealing with a lot. Despite everyone's reassurances he is constantly insecure, on top of which he has this embarrassing crush.Then..... things get weird.This is a canon divergent fic that branches off after the Blade of Marmora episode in season 2. I started writing this between seasons 2 and 3 and a lot of the basic plot points and structure were already planned, so any similarities to the way canon has developed since are mostly coincidental. I will not be changing my story to match canon.Additionally, this is a plot heavy fic. Romance (klance) will feature much more heavily than it would in your average TV series, but possibly not as prominently as it would in your average slash fic. But it is there, and it will develop.*updated irregularly, and infrequently*(sorry)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This prologue jumps through the first eight episodes of s2 in a series of vignettes, each from a different character's viewpoint. Canon divergence and plot proper begin in the first chapter, but the prologue introduces important information.

*******

 

_“Sir, our scanners have picked up an anomaly in the cosmic background radiation. We believe it may be extraterrestrial communication.”_

_“Thank you, Johnson; this is news indeed. Keep me apprised of the situation.”_

_“Yes, sir.”_

 

*******

 

Lance gently brushed the moisturizing mask over his face. Jellyfish stings and the humidity of the ocean floor had left his skin dry, flaky, and a little red.

_Still better than Shiro has it,_ he thought with a frown at his reflection. Aloud he added,

“What’s some eczema compared to a _magical wound_?”

The movement burned his mouth.

“Ow! It was a rhetorical question,” he muttered, out loud again in self spite. “A day in the pod…” 

Lance had two thoughts at once -

I  _spent_ two  _days in the pod_.

_I wonder if pods fix dry skin..._

\- and cringed at his own vanity. 

_Shiro could have died._ _I could have… we could die any time._

Suddenly, Lance’s skin didn’t seem so important anymore - but neither did anything else. So he slipped on his sleep mask and headphones, and slid into bed. It was a good forty-five minutes of restless half-wakefulness before he realized he’d forgotten to even start his playlist.

 

~

 

Shiro was in the pod less than a full twenty-four hours. 

He awoke paralyzed and unable to draw breath, still present in the reality of his memory-dream. That panic faded as mobility returned to his limbs and lungs, but the sense of urgency remained. He stumbled out to tell his teammates what he had remembered.

“The Galra cannot be trusted,” was Allura's cynical response. She was angry at the genocide of her people, fresh and recent in her mind. It felt like she was angry at him, and Shiro resented that. 

But Allura had a right to be angry. Shiro had no right to hate her for it.

So he hated himself for that.

 

~

 

Allura struggled to separate the grief of her past from her mission in the present. Nor could she hold any Galra free of blame, even after the rebel Ulaz had taken them to his base and given his life to save them. 

“Their kind have tricked us before,” she reminded Coran, who needed no reminder.

“The memory of that betrayal is no older to me than to you,” he agreed. “But, Princess, so much could have changed in... 10,000 years is a very long time.”

“ _Nothing_ has changed!” Allura contended. “Not even the one on the throne, it has been him all this time, - alive…!” 

Coran paused and chose his words with uncharacteristic care. 

“You are right, Princess. It may well be that little or nothing has changed in all that time. But even all those years ago… Allura... you were too young to understand the politics of it all.”

Allura reddened. “The Galra do not deal in _politics_ , they deal in _terror_! I am old enough to know what they did! To their own planet… to ours, to… to Father…" she blinked rapidly, mouth turning down at the corners as she tried to swallow her sobs. “Father... Coran, my father… ” 

Giving up his side of the argument immediately, Coran took the Princess into his arms and whispered, 

“I know, Allu. I know. It isn’t fair, I know.” 

“My father,” Allura repeated, soft and choked, “my father...”

 

~

 

“My daughter. Katie Holt.” 

“No, I’m sorry, ma’am, we don’t have any students by that name in our register. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Please connect me with Commodore Johnson.”

“I’m sorry ma’am, I can’t - ”

“This is the widow of Commander Holt. Please put me through to Commodore Johnson.”

“I - one moment please.”

Hold music. A recruiting advertisement. More music. _Click_. 

“Hello? Mrs. Holt?”

“Commodore Johnson?”

“Commodore Johnson is busy. This is Commander Iverson.”

“I see, well… I am calling about my daughter, Katie - ”

“Your daughter has been banned from these premises for nearly a year, Mrs. Holt.”

“Banned? Why - a year? No, that can’t be possible,” Colleen thought aloud, synapses firing. The conspiracy theories… all the secrecy, the sneaking around that Colleen had been too lost in her own grief to…

“Pidge... try Pidge.” 

“ _Pidge??_ Pidge Gunderson?”

“Yes - yes, Gunderson is mine, my maiden name, that must be….” 

Silence. Then,

“Shit.”

“Excuse me?” Colleen gripped the phone tighter and sank into an armchair, her heart pounding. It had been weeks since she’d had any contact with her daughter. Though she feared the truth now more than ever, the uncertainty was driving her mad.

“Mrs. Holt. It is my duty to inform you that Pidge… that your daughter was…”

“Was?” The word wormed its way around Colleen’s heart like an icy serpent.

“Pidge Gunderson was killed last month. In an accident. The details are classified. I’m so sorry.”

Silence. Then,

“I deeply regret that you were not informed sooner. Please accept my sincerest condolences, Mrs. Holt.”

“Doctor.”

“I - ?”

“My name is Dr. Holt, and I can assure you, I _will_ get to the bottom of this.” And with a sob that surprised her as much as anyone Colleen let her phone drop to the carpet without ending the call. Iverson’s voice on the other end continued for another few seconds before cutting out, leaving Colleen wrapped in the ringing silence of her three bedroom home.

 

~

 

“I heard you talking about my Lion!” Lance accused, popping into the hallway without warning, comically serious in his bathrobe and mud mask. “Whatever you think you have with her, you need to forget it! She’s very happy with me.”

“I’m not _trying_ to steal your Lion, Lance, I _have_ my own!” snapped Keith. Even as he spoke he could feel the Blue Lion’s Energy thrumming through the depths of his consciousness like the distant memory of a home he’d never had.

“Don’t lie to me!” Lance was still talking. “I know you’ve had your eye on Blue from the beginning!”

_Longer than you have_ , Keith thought obstinately. The Blue Energy spiked with Lance’s emotions and Keith scoffed. It muddied his thoughts, swirled around his mind like oil in water.

Yet it was a comfortable feeling. It - it _smelled_ like his shack in Comstock, when he was chasing the mystery of something greater. Magic and mystery had since faded into day-to-day reality, and he'd learned to live with the Blue Lion's Energy in the back of his mind.

But in it, Keith sometimes still felt the echo of fevered excitement. It was... like Lance, it was... sometimes annoying. 

Shaking his head in frustration, Keith walked away, ignoring Lance’s provocations.

 

~

 

At first, Coran was grateful for the distractions. The Princess was in a such a delicate state, he would rather she worry about saving others than dwell on her own losses. But it was a fine balance, and running from Zarkon was draining her body and spirit. She blamed herself for so much and took everything so seriously - except her own well-being...

“Is the Princess with you?”

Coran knew the answer before Shiro even asked.

“You both need to come back to the ship immediately, please!" he said "If Zarkon finds us again we won’t be able to form Voltron  _or_ wormhole away!”

“And more importantly!” added Lance in a squeaking parody of sternness, “um, what are you guys doing out there? Alone? Like...”

“We can’t come back until we know Zarkon isn’t tracking the ship through us," Allura answered. "We can’t put you all in danger.”

“Princess, please think this over,” Shiro implored. Shiro - Shiro and Allura were kids, thrust into positions of huge responsibility. Coran was a seasoned adult, with experience in a wide variety of undesirable situations. He knew exactly what to do. 

“Princess Allura, turn that shuttle around right this moment or you are grounded!” he demanded, stamping down his foot. Shiro sighed, because he thought Coran didn’t understand how ridiculous he sounded. 

Oh, but how little these children understood the calculation, the deliberation behind every face, every pun, every silly sound...! All for their benefit. They would fret about everything, they would worry with abandon, and they would all feel alone and adrift.

So Coran would be their anchor, their reminder that even in the most barren reaches of space, laughter still echoes through the stars!....... 

“ - to see if Zarkon is tracking you why did you leave _together_ in the _middle of the night_ \- ” 

“Lance,” Shiro warned.

“ - if he shows up, _which he won’t_ , by the way, how did you think you’re going to know which of you - ”

“And here I thought you really didn’t understand the concept of a variable,” muttered Pidge.

“Lance!” Shiro repeated, more forcefully, then turned his attention to the screen. “Listen. I hope you will both reconsider and at least - return within the hour. If Zarkon is tracking you, he’ll have found you by then.” 

An alert appeared on the Castleship's screen and before anyone could answer, the connection with the pod was lost. 

“Not to worry, team!” chirped Coran, dodging remnants of the planet Taujeer. “I have very magnetic presence that I’m sure the princess and our young Keith won’t bear to be separated from for long - now in the meantime, let’s go see what happening to this planet, and how we can help!”

“Agreed,” said Shiro, though Coran was pretty sure he was only agreeing to the last part.

And that was good enough for him.

 

~

 

“Klanmural,” Pidge mimicked. She stared at the alien bear, trying to make some connection between this hologram and the sound she had just made. What she didn’t expect was for the bear to growl and grow several inches. 

A smooth, artificial voice repeated the Altean word.

_Come on, when am I even going to need this?_ Pidge thought in agitation. Her lazy classmates had said the same things about math, and Pidge had rolled her eyes at them. Even to elementary-aged Pidge, math had been more intrinsically appealing than other people.

“Klan-merl!” she yelped, crawling backward from the darkening projection. 

It hadn’t been until her transition that Pidge took any interest in the social conventions of her peers. That was when she grew out her hair, pierced her ears, experimented with makeup. She cared, for the first time, how her classmates saw her; and she was desperate to cement her femininity. 

But when she would immerse herself in code, in tech, those social expectations fell away. She was only her naked self, her simplest existence, a string of cosmic ones and naughts.... 

Pidge took in the Altean word for the third time, with adrenaline-sharpened ears. 

“Klanmüirl," she spat back, "klanmüirl!” -

\- and heaved a sigh of relief when the nightmare before her shrank and disappeared.

Pidge hoped the lesson would continue with grammar. The mathematical structure of language was more her area of expertise; the organic and evolving reality of its everyday use was… well. 

_On the other hand_ , Pidge thought with pride, _if I can hack a tree, then I can damn well hack an ancient alien language_.

It had been an epiphany on Olkarion, understanding how the math she loved permeated the very world she used it to escape. The same patterns and constants described the void, the stars and the lives they illumined. Where did those lives intersect? How many configurations of binary digits could there be?

Feeling curious and empowered, Pidge straightened and looked up to face her next word... 

A series of impossible clicks and stops incongruous with the soft automated voice. Pidge felt her confidence falter.

Perhaps there were more permutations than she had guessed.

 

~

 

Hunk was a good engineer - a brilliant engineer - but he could just as happily spend his life in a kitchen.

Only... 

Not chained to a sink, washing dishes. 

_Come on. Lance…? Someone? Someone will have to find me…_ he thought gloomily, tension in his shoulders growing with every passing tick. He was not the best fighter. He was not the best pilot or leader, he didn’t have some… psychic connection to alien technology. Hunk knew his limitations, but he also knew his strengths. Vrepit Sal’s robot breaking down was an extraordinary stroke of good luck.  

So what if he didn’t know what any of this food was? Cooking it was easy, natural.

This spice and this tuber fit together like scaultrite cookies and a teludav. This vegetable and this sauce repelled each other like Lance and Keith.

And Sal, Sal cowered before him, as tall and purple as any of Hunk's enemies. That experience was surreal. Sal, Ulaz, Zarkon… they clashed against each other like mismatched flavors in Hunk's gut.

But these were flavors Hunk did not know how to reconcile.

 

*******

 

_“Sir. The transmissions have increased in volume.”_  

_“Exhilarating. Momentous. What do they tell us?”_

_“We have collected what we believe to be conclusive evidence of their alien origin, sir, but our linguists and code-breakers are still working to decipher their content.”_

_“This is a security concern, Johnson, you understand? It is our top priority to learn what these communications mean. We must be prepared to respond.”_

_“Yes, sir. I will reassign more personnel to this project.”_

_“Thank you, Johnson - but be careful whom you inform. This information cannot leak to the public.”_

_“Yes, sir. I understand.”_

 

*******

 


	2. The Blue Energy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit: parts of this chapter have been moved around to fix a continuity error I noticed when looking over it; hopefully it makes more sense now

*******

 

_“The farthest distance at which the Earth has_ _been viewed_ _was 6 billion kilometers afield, in a photograph sent from_ Voyager 1 _as it left the Solar System…_ _For centuries we thought ourselves a lone blue lifeboat in a sea of black, then - ”_  

_“Sir? Sorry to interrupt, sir, but our team has begun to decipher the alien broadcasts.”_

_“Excellent work, Johnson. What have they learned?”_  

_“Only the most_ _commonly_ _repeated word has_ _been translated_ _, sir.”_  

_“And? What is it?”_  

_“_ Help _, sir. The word is_ help _.”_

 

*******

Keith chased globules of goo across his plate - a mindless task for his hands and eyes that left his brain free to focus on the stories of the day's exploits, which were being passed around the dinner table like helpings of vegetables and meat. It was loud but pleasant, and the words were easier to consume than the food. Hunk had announced a short sabbatical from cooking after the mall adventure, leaving Coran in charge of the evening meal.  
  
Hunk’s tale had just been told, and Keith suspected he would be asked to give his own account before the evening was through. For the moment he stayed comfortably silent, listening to Lance’s animated storytelling.   
  
"Man, we sure showed that mall cop, Shiro - you should have seen him running after us on his little... fucken... scooter thing..."   
  
"While you were piloting the cow?" Shiro chuckled, raising an amused eyebrow.   
  
“Kaltenecker!” Lance corrected. “And that cop was eating my space dust!”   
  
"Yeah, until you slammed into a wall and got KO'ed!" roared Pidge.   
  
“Piiiiiiiidge, I wasn’t gonna tell him that part…” 

_What parts am_ I  _going to tell_ _?_ wondered Keith with a pang of worry. As if his own problems weren't enough, he could feel the Blue Energy again, seeping into the vulnerable parts of his mind. It was the same energy that had drawn Keith to the desert. He recognized it now as some property or signature of the Blue Lion. That didn't explain why it kept undulating through his mind.

Right now it was like a mirror to Lance’s mood, and Lance was gloomier than he sounded. Something swirled at the pit of Keith's stomach. An insurmountable loneliness: that was Lance.

“ - if we can get some milk from that cow, I bet I could even make ice cream, pizza, creme brulee!” 

“What kind of concoctions are those?” Coran leaned across the table in a grandiose display of interest, eyebrows shooting into his hairline.

“Oh. My gosh. That settles it, I’m gonna find a way,” Hunk vowed. “You can’t _describe_ the taste of pizza, Coran, it’s just something that has to be experienced.” 

Keith stomped his feet physically into the ground trying to tamp down on the swelling presence of Lance in his thoughts. Shiro raised his eyebrows at the noise but Keith shook his head. He didn't need anyone else in his mind. The Blue Energy was cresting like a tidal wave, scattering the flotsam and jetsam of Lance's issues across his inner landscape. Keith had dealt with isolation before, and despair, but hadn't felt them so acutely since Shiro first disappeared. He couldn't help but resent Lance for bringing that memory back.  
  
Lance was coddled, he thought uncharitably - soft.

“Whaddaya think, Lance? Got room for dessert?” Hunk prompted, drawing Keith out of his own mind. "I think some food from Sal's kitchen ended up in my pockets and I'm kinda feeling like whipping something up."

"Oh man, Hunk, dude, as hard as that is to resist, I am _so_ stuffed right now, I don't think I could do anything but sleep. I am about to go fall into a food coma so deep, it might take the kiss of a beautiful princess to break the spell." Lance shot finger guns at Allura, who glared daggers through his face.

Keith rolled his eyes but as soon as Lance left he felt a flood of relief. The Blue Energy pulled back from the vulnerable places in his mind and receded toward Lance's room.

The vacuum it left behind was a lonely reminder of the storm that still churned under smooth blue of saltwater eyes.

 

For dessert Hunk threw together sliced fruit and some kind of bittersweet sauce. Simple, but it washed away the mushy, bland sensation of dinner. Keith stumbled through his own story, steering around certain details.

“So I, uh. I found an alien selling knives and watched him cut up some fruit. Nothing much happened on my end till security started chasing us, and you’ve all heard that story.” 

“Hm,” Pidge acknowledged from the other side of the table where she sat with her head resting on her fist. “Maybe Lance should have stayed, your story might have put him to sleep.”

Keith reddened, nerves on edge, grip tightening around the absent hilt of his sword.

“You _asked_ what happened!” he protested. “Fine. I’m going to go train.” 

“Don’t stay up too late,” Shiro called after him. Keith grunted in response. 

Shuffling towards the training deck, Keith felt the creeping resurgence of Lance's mood at the edge of his own thoughts. He was already passing Shiro's door and his own - Lance's was next, drawing closer with every step until it was an arm's length away. Keith could feel his hand stretching toward it as though to knock... but if Hunk hadn’t gone after his friend, Lance certainly didn’t need Keith to. Right?  
  
Then, without pausing, he continued past Lance’s room toward the training deck. Relief and regret washed over him like Blue waves.   
  
But when he finally found himself alone with the stoic, unfeeling gladiator - Keith felt safe. 

 

~

 

Hunk didn’t pass his friend’s door. He didn’t knock, either. He barged in, grinning sheepishly.

“Okay, so _apparently_ you can only milk cows when they, like, have a baby.”

“You seriously didn’t know that, dude?”

Lance was sprawled on his back over his still-made bed. The smile he flashed when his head turned to the door was bright but shallow. Hunk pressed on.

“ _But_ Coran _did_ tell me about this planet that’s famous for its cheese. So sometime when we have a free day maybe…”

“What, we sneak off like Keith and Allura and go find it?” Lance supplied.

“Uh, no; no, I will not be party to any more of your _sneaking off_ , Lance. But, Coran would take us! He’s pretty cool. Mostly. Most of the time. Eh - Either way, I see a lot of pizza in your future, buddy.”

Lance made a half-hearted attempt to widen his grin. Maybe three-quarters-hearted. Hunk decided it was time to hit him with the coup de grace.

“In the meantime...” Hunk paused dramatically, producing from from behind his back a floating silver tray. A kettle perched on its mirrored surface, white and impossibly clean with a curl of steam floating like dragon’s breath from its spout. A smooth, thick-sided cup rested next to it, wrapped in softly luminescent turquoise patterns. Lance’s eyes glowed back in curiosity. “...I thought you might like some _green tea_.” 

Lance sat up at that. “What? Really?”

“Uh, kind of? I mean it’s. It’s liquid. It’s... hot. And green? Coran said it’s some kind of health drink? ...Stimulant?” The tendril of steam blossomed into a fragrant mist as Hunk poured a generous cup. “Honestly, man, I kind of stopped listening when we got off the topic of cheese.” 

Lance laughed in agreement and reached for the cup, testing its temperature with the pads of his fingers before closing his hand around the top like a claw crane. Hunk beamed as his friend lifted the cup and placed it delicately in the palm of his opposite hand and breathed lightly over the rim. He took a lazy sip and breathed out in satisfaction. 

“Mmmmm. I can feel the antioxidants… antioxidizing. My skin is clearing, Hunk. You’ve added five years to my life.” 

"Your skin was already clear, dude..." Hunk shrugged off the praise. In his mind he busy was kneading together the words for a Serious Talk. He tasted them one by one as they gathered silent on the tip of his tongue.

Lance laughed again and took another sip of tea. 

“Thanks, I know.” His shoulders softened and dropped to rest below his neck, giving Hunk the courage to speak.

“Yeah… Hey Lance..." he ventured. “You know, I uh. I miss my family, too. All the time, so. I get it.”

Lance’s shoulders jumped up again and he stilled. Hunk swallowed and tried to guess what to say next, but Lance unfroze before he had the chance.

"W - what do you mean?"

"Lance... I may be an optimist, a nervous wreck, a gastrointestinal disaster, and at best a mediocre pilot, but I am _not_ emotionally blind."

There was a tenderness in the expression Lance returned, a sting of guilt.

Hunk shrugged. It was a bit of a passive aggressive move and he knew it: _if you’re not going to take care of yourself why should I?_

But it worked.

"Okay. Fine. Hunk? It’s just. I’ve never been away from them this long. Garrison was hard enough.” His smile was now genuine but sad.

Hunk nodded encouragingly - he knew. He’d consoled Lance through bouts of homesickness before, but didn't know how to reassure him now. They wouldn't see there families on break. They might not see them again for years, or ever. Hunk tried not to follow that train of thought, because that wasn't going to be helpful for either of them.

The only thing Hunk could do was try to fill some of the space Lance's family had left in his heart... and trust that Lance would do the same for him. So he listened, letting the pause drag out to make sure his friend had said everything he wanted to share. To make sure he wasn’t hesitating to say something new, something Hunk hadn’t already heard.

  
“I don’t know, man - I don’t really know what to do without them,” Lance confided finally. “Not just, like, like in the way people usually mean, where they’re just like… missing someone, for me it’s literally. I… need them to tell me, like, if I’m doing the right thing.”

Hunk frowned. “What are you worried about? That you’re doing wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Lance hedged, looking down. He concentrated on his floor, like he was working up the courage to say something, or trying decide whether he should. “Little things, usually. Sometimes... everything?"

There was a rare vulnerability in Lance's face. He studied the texture of his comforter between the fingers of one hand, tea resting forgotten in the palm of the other. His eyes searched the floor for words to put to his thoughts, so Hunk pressed gently.

"What about right now?"

"I'm just..." Lance let his mouth move around the shapes of words without voicing them for a few seconds before continuing. "I feel like everyone - like people get impatient with me. I know I'm annoying and maybe sometimes I'm just, like, goofing off and getting in everyone's way..."

Hunks heart sunk a little.

"I don't think you're annoying," he said quietly, "and I'm really… I don’t think you know how glad I am you’re here, too. Like, I know you miss home and all but... I don't think I could handle any this if, you know, you weren’t. Here."

"Heh, if I weren't here you wouldn’t be either, remember?"

"Yeah, and Galra ship would have recaptured Shiro and enslaved the Earth!" Hunk reminded him. "That is not a time where you get to wonder whether you did the right thing, man! You were right! You were absolutely right and I was wrong, period."

Lance hummed skeptically but looked up at Hunk with smiling eyes.

"So, um..." Hunk concluded awkwardly, "no one's gonna be right all the time, even Keith, even Allura... even you, even - even Shiro..."

Something in Lance's expression had closed off, but Hunk couldn't tell why or exactly when - his friend covered the change with a mouthful of space tea and carefully let his shoulders fall again. Hunk wasn't going to push for anything Lance wasn't ready to say.

“Okayyyy, well…” he conceded, standing to leave. “I’m gonna go get ready for bed. You know they’ll wake us up early for training tomorrow.”

“I know.”

Hunk edged toward the door, leaving the tray and kettle for Lance.

“Hey. Hunk,” Lance called after him before the door slid shut. Hunk turned to look back around at him.

“Thanks, dude. Really,” Lance said with a smile. Hunk returned it and left for his room feeling just a little lighter.

 

~

 

Life at the McClain-Sanchez household was as close to normal as it had been in weeks. A funeral had been held, condolences accepted. The drudgeries and little joys of everyday life were persistent in their demand for attention. Mrs. McClain seemed hardest hit, so wracked with grief she was barely functional. Mrs. Sanchez was in no less pain, but she channeled it in more productively - if in equally unhealthy pursuits.

“One year - to the day, exactly one year after those Pluto astronauts disappear? Vanishing in threes, that’s a magic number, and they say ‘accident’? They say ‘coincidence’? To his family they say this? No, no lo acepto, no _puede ser_ que -”

“Ma!” Lance’s eldest sister Emilia snapped in response. “You have to let this _go_ , stop - ” she glanced around at her younger siblings and her own son then lowered her voice, “ - _stop_ giving them this… this hope ! No, no, no don’t look at me like that, es falsa esperanza and you _know_ it, mamá, you’re just going to hurt them more.”

Rosa drew her lips into a thin line and stared back, eyes swimming in unshed tears. 

“I thought of all my children you would understand.”

Emilia swallowed thickly.

“I just - ” she choked out, words heavy with hurt, “I worry about you, too, Ma. Of course I love Lance, and I never thought - _never_ imagined I’d lose someone so young, but... you’re still young, too - don’t laugh, Ma! - and so are Cameron and Bri. I don’t want to - don’t want them to somehow _lose you_ , so soon, after, so…. Just, cuídate, mamá.”

Rosa’s mouth softened into a smile. 

“No te preocupes, mija. I am not going anywhere - but I _am_ going to find out what really happened to your brother.”

 

~ 

 

Lance turned over onto his stomach and groaned. He was so tired, but his brain wouldn’t shut up and his body tensed with excitement or dread at every passing thought. Finally he sat up and tore off his sleep mask with a growl. Hopping to his feet, Lance paced around his room a couple of times before coming to a halt in front of the door. He stared at it, imagining himself leaving for the observation deck... heading to the kitchen to find Hunk… going to look for Keith…

“Augh - no!” Lance berated himself. “Stop! Stop that! I don’t have _time_ for this shit!” Attraction leapt unbidden from his gut to his heart and he stamped it down. The stupid way he was always ready to fight anyone, the singing in Lance's gut when that passion was directed at him...

It had felt good for a while, the floating feeling that came with Keith. Something to hold on to, look forward to, other than the distant promise home. Now he just felt selfish for indulging it so long that he'd lost the power to ignore it. It was like he was watching a train approach in slow motion, standing on the tracks and his body too heavy to move. He scowled and lay on his back on the floor, staring up at the light on his ceiling.

“The entire universe is screwed if we don’t do something but all you can think about is your own dumb feelings,” he whispered to himself. “Mom… mamá…”

 

Lance had been 14 the first time he’d had a crush on a boy. It wasn’t anything… completely out of his sphere of experience. The last dozen years of his life, he’d been raised by two moms, after his ma divorced his biological father when he was two. But it had been a new enough experience at a confusing enough time that Lance had gone to his moms for advice. 

_“Ma..._ _I think_ _I like someone…”_ he had said staring at the floor.

_“Who is it, mijo?”_ she had asked with glee as she glanced over from the chicken and rice Lance was helping her prepare. 

_“It’s… it's a boy…”_

_“Oh?”_ his ma had prompted casually.

_“I’ve never… before…”_ Lance had continued lamely, _“so I don’t know…”_

_“You don’t have to know anything yet.”_

_“Maybe… maybe it’s just a… ‘man crush’....”_ Lance had been expecting his mamá to laugh at the terminology but she only smiled, echoing,

_“_ _Maybe_ _, Lance. You don’t have to know.”_

 

Lance’s eyes watered in the harsh light from overhead. He squeezed them shut and wished, somehow, he could talk to his ma. The echo of Hunk’s words from the other night joined her in his mind. _You don’t have to know. Everything you do isn't going to be right._

As if there was room for error in their line of work. 

_Ma…_ _I think_ _I like a boy,_ Lance thought into the universe behind his closed eyes, wondering what she would say this time. That wasn't even the worst of it. Lance had clung to and leaned on his moms his whole life, and now that he had been given a chance to do something for them, to return the favor, he just wanted their advice on his boy problems. Like the entitled teenager he was, expecting everyone to go out of their way to make him feel valued or appreciated.

Hunk had his own family to miss, but he spent his time comforting Lance. Shiro had his PTSD, or whatever, but he still acted like an adult. Pidge... well, at least she seemed more focused on her own issues than Lance's, so he didn't have to feel guilty about that. And Keith? Lance got the sense that he'd just undergone something momentous, maybe even traumatic, and all Lance had done was stand in front of him and angrily demand an explanation. Lance's heart sank a little at that memory. Keith probably hated him for it, but god dammit that wasn't the point!

_Not everything is about you_ _!_

With a growing resolve Lance sat up, then stood, clinched his fists and made a silent promise to take his duties more seriously, to put his team's needs first...

A soft purr rose up Lance's spinal cord into his mind, massaging the tense nerves along the way.

"Mom...?" he whispered as a rush of oxytocin and dopamine flooded his tissues. "Blue?"

The telepathic equivalent of a nuzzle. Lance's fists unclenched.

"Okay," he agreed. "Okay, girl. Maybe I'll be a little selfish... sometimes. Okay - alright, okay!"

Eyes sweeping the room for something to do until dinner, Lance noticed the kettle of green tea, cold and forgotten on its floating tray by his bed.

"Hmm..." he murmured, going through recipes in his head. Then with a smile and newfound lightness, he strolled out his door toward the kitchen to find ingredients for a facial scrub, or maybe a toner.

 

~

 

The short journey back from the Marmora headquarters gave Shiro time to reevaluate his opinion of the Blade. He weighed the pros and cons of their allyship - of their very existence - as Red flew the narrow passage between incineration and crushing death. 

She docked in the Castle and with his left hand, Shiro helped Keith stand. Their team was waiting just outside. Shiro hesitated, and Keith made no move to de-lion either. If his team - if anyone took their news badly, Shiro knew he was going to have to defend Keith. Even if suspicion and mistrust were turned against him, Shiro was firmly on Keith's side.

A cough from behind reminded him of their guests. Shiro sighed and stepped forward out of the Lion to whatever welcome they would get. There was no use in going on the defensive before anyone had even been given the chance to react. Shiro reprimanded himself for having so little faith in his friends.

 

“Thank you,” Allura replied curtly to the pleasantries of a kneeling Kolivan. She was no more pleased than he had expected, and Shiro was ashamed to find a strange and small satisfaction in the validation of those fears. Her eyes found him next and, with a flash of anger, noticed the body leaning on his shoulder.

“What did you do to Keith.” 

Antok sprang to his leader’s defense: “The Paladin did this to himself.”

“Why did the Red Lion attack your base, then?” Allura demanded, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Antok clenched a fist, but Kolivan held up his hand.

“Princess Allura, your companion chose, of his own free will and understanding the dangers, to undergo the Trials of Marmora. He knew failure to complete the trials and awaken his blade would end in death - ”

“Look, Princess, he’s fine,” interjected Shiro, “but he’s tired. Maybe now isn’t the best time - ” 

Allura ignored him, mind still tracing the implications of Kolivan’s words.

“What blade?” she addressed the Marmorite leader directly. “His bayard?” 

“No, majesty. The luxite blade he carries. It belongs to our order.”

“What do you mean?” Allura met Shiro’s eyes with a questioning look that hadn’t quite figured out how angry to be or at whom. “Shiro? Keith…?

Keith pushed away from his grip on Shiro’s flesh arm and stood firmly on his own, fixing the Princess with a level gaze.

“Hey, what. What’s going on? Why’s everyone so…?” Lance was looking from Shiro to Allura to Keith to the Marmorites.

“Only someone…” Keith began, eyes still trained on Allura. “Only someone with Galra blood can awaken the blade. So now you know.” 

“Wait, what does that mean?” said Hunk. For a while no one spoke. Keith's eyes remained steady and unreadable, but a kaleidoscope of emotions passed over Allura's face in quick succession, her expression hardening with each change.

“It’s clear what he means, Hunk,” she said finally. Her gaze broke from Keith's, and she glided stern and silent down a corridor away from the group.

“Uh! No it’s not!” Lance called after her.

“I’ll... I'll go talk to her,” said Coran in the most sincere tone Shiro had ever heard him use. He disappeared down the same hallway, and Kolivan frowned after him.

“We had hoped to discuss our plans against Zarkon’s empire,” he said, “but it appears your team has more pressing concerns, Shiro. Are we welcome on this vessel?”

“For real, though! Shiro? Keith? What - ?” persisted Lance. Shiro glanced to where Keith stood next to him, scowling at the ground. He looked up at his name, but couldn't hold Lance's searching gaze for long. Averting his eyes with a huff of frustration, Keith turned his back on his teammates and with a slow and careful gait set off in the direction of the training deck, or maybe his room.

"Keith? Keith! Hey, don't ignore me when I'm talking to you - " Lance took a step toward Keith's retreating figure, but Shiro stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and a meaningful look. He surveyed his remaining teammates, watching with wide and waiting eyes.

"Black Paladin. Shiro," prompted Kolivan. Shiro turned to answer him, but Pidge cleared her throat.

“I can’t speak for anyone but myself," she said quietly, "but personally I hope you stay. I’ve been studying Galra culture, so I was hoping you might be able to fill in some gaps in the ancient Altean materials I’ve been using.”

“Fighters of the Blade guard our secrets more closely than our lives,” Antok answered.

Lance huffed at this, swatted Shiro's hand away from his shoulder and crossed his arms. Pidge made a hum of interest and pulled up a small holoscreen to make a note.

“I’ve encountered a similar sentiment in Zarkon’s soldiers - tell me, does Galra society have a collectivist social structure?”

Lance threw up his arms.

“Oh for - I’m going to take a nap. I’ll be in my room if anyone wants to tell me what’s going on.”

“I… should I make extra food for dinner?” said Hunk, edging toward the door to the kitchen. Pidge was still interrogating the Marmorites.

“What kind of sociopolitical system did the Galra have before Zarkon seized power - or, I guess that was 10,000 years ago, you might not know. Speaking of which, how long do Galra live? Also, how do you know English?”

“What is he talking about?” Antok whispered to Kolivan, who shrugged.

“ _She_ , actually,” Pidge corrected. “I’m a girl.” 

“What is a girl?”

Shiro was getting a headache.

"Antok... Kolivan... will you... do us the honor of dining with us tonight? Hopefully tensions will have cooled by the time the food is ready."

"The honor would be ours," Kolivan replied courteously. Shiro glanced to Hunk, who nodded vigorously and darted from the room.

“Look," continued Shiro. "I’m… I apologize for your chilly reception...”

“We expected little better,” Kolivan admitted, “and have received no worse than we doled out.”

“That's... true…” Shiro couldn’t help but agree. “Listen - while we wait for dinner, I would be very interested in any intelligence you’re willing to share.”

“We are interested in your intelligence, too, Champion, but I would prefer to discuss this with your whole team.”

“Please, don’t call me that. But I understand. In that case… is there anything I can do to make you comfortable while you wait?”

“I could give them a tour!” Pidge jumped to offer.

“Um... I’m not sure our guests would appreciate…”

“That would be amenable,” Kolivan agreed.

“Oh,” Shiro backtracked. “Alright then… um... keep your comm on you, Pidge. I don’t want you missing dinner again.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, _dad_.”

“Please.... don’t call me that.”

Pidge saluted mockingly, then gestured for the Marmorites to follow her.

“So first let me show you my equipment! I used it on Earth to filter alien messages out of electromagnetic radiation. I was the first person on my planet to know life existed elsewhere in the universe! Well, maybe. By the way, do you Galra not have a concept of gender, or…?”

Shiro waited for Pidge’s voice to fade into the Castleship’s twists and turns before lowering to his haunches and burying his face in his flesh hand. Then he straightened, and marched towards Keith's room.

 

~

 

"And this room contains the cryo pods and healing pods. Well, they're really the same pod but there’s different settings,” Pidge rambled while Kolivan and Antok nodded and hummed politely. “Of course you probably know all about that, though, since your tech is 10,000 years ahead of this." 

"Actually, small one, technology has progressed comparatively little in the past one hundred centuries,” Kolivan divulged. “Compared, that is, to the time before Zarkon took power."

"Really? Fascinating - you mean to say progress within Zarkon's sphere of influence has stalled?"

"Technology is born out of necessity, child," Antok spoke up in answer. "Zarkon has an endless supply of slave labor at his command."

Pidge blinked, face growing somber, and caught her reflection in the surface of a pod.

"There's - there's actually something I've been wanting to ask you, but I wasn't sure you would answer," Pidge breathed after a pause. "I'll understand if you can't say anything but... I hope you'll be willing to tell me whatever you can." 

"Speak," Antok urged. Pidge looked over from her reflection and clenched her fists. The words spilled out in a desperate torrent.

"My brother and father were taken captive by the Galra over a year ago, along with Shiro. Do you have any information - any idea where I might look for them? My dad was taken to a work camp and my brother was put in the gladiator ring, but Shiro hurt him so he wouldn't have to compete. That's all I know."

Antok looked to his leader, deferring. Kolivan spoke carefully.

"Here is what I can tell you, child: the empire has... experienced an increased interest in the inhabitants of Earth since the discovery of the Blue Lion there. Wherever your family may be, I am sure their captors are keeping them alive, at least."

Pidge's breath hitched at the bittersweet news; quietly she pressed: "Do... does Zarkon know...?"

"That I cannot say, though I would take his silence as a good sign. Know also that rebels and spies are everywhere in Zarkon's command, under his very nose, ripping his rule apart at its seams. Your kin may yet have shed their chains, but even if not their freedom is inevitable. If you and your family survive that war, you will be reunited."

Pidge's cheeks were streaked with hot tears and she wiped her dribbling nose on the back of her sleeve.

"Thank you... I think." 

Kolivan nodded and turned to a corridor they had not yet explored.

"What lies that way?"

"Oh, yeah!" Pidge sniffed, perking up. "You can get to the hangars that way. I was going to show you my equipment!" She bounded off toward the doorway, Marmorites trailing behind.

 

~

 

"Allura!" Coran called as he followed her echoing footsteps. "Allura, it's just me, wait up!" He paused for a second to kneel down and hold his ear against the floor. "The simulation room?" he muttered, groaning as he straightened back up. "What could you be doing there?"

Coran found his Princess kneeling in the empty room that had once held her father's AI, staring at the broken processor at its center.

"Coran..." she greeted him without looking around. "I don't... I don't want to make the same mistakes my father made. He wouldn't have wanted it either - the AI told me as much."

"Well naturally, Princess, no parent wants their child to suffer from their same missteps - but you have to make your own calls. It's dangerous to trust the memory of people who have gone more than you trust yourself - remember?"

"Of course I remember... Coran, one of father's biggest mistakes was  _trusting_ the Galra who fought beside him - and I've unwittingly fallen into the same trap."

Coran frowned. "Allu... your father was a great man and leader, and his trusting nature was one of his most admirable qualities - "

"Until it got him - killed!" Allura choked. "Those who don't learn from history..."

"Are very bad pupils indeed," Coran finished, "as your dashing history tutor used to say." He winked down at her.

"I never was your best student..." Allura reflected sheepishly, and Coran's eyes crinkled at the corners of his smile.

"So listen to your teacher: you are not your father, Allura - and Keith his not his... whatever... humans have, you get the point. You can't avoid his mistakes by just doing the opposite of everything he did. You've got to make your own judgments, Princess."

"Then how do I know if they're the right ones?"

"Well, you don't, of course. You think King Alfor would have made the same decisions if he had that kind of insight?"

"At least he had Seers... to consult..."

"Yet they didn't See the future that came to be," Coran pointed out. "You can't See, maybe, but I know you can Feel. Do these visitors - does _Keith_ \- _F_ _eel_ Galra to you?"

"Not - not exactly, but... I still wish..."

"The look at what you can see - if you can't See the future look into the past. It's a lot easier to do, and you might learn something just as valuable."

"Yes, Coran... you're right. Thank you, I... I'll see you at dinner."

Allura stood and slowly left the room. Coran let his smile falter a little after she'd turned her back.

 

~

 

Perched on the edge of his bed, Keith took out his heirloom, the Galra knife that had cut him deeper than any enemy blade. It was shrunken to its dagger size again, and he didn't know how to reawaken it. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to know anymore. Flipping the knife over in his hands, Keith stared at the symbol on its hilt, squinting as if his newfound identity would make him suddenly literate in the Galra language. His eyes watered as he stared and the letter shimmered around the edges... Keith leaned forward, blinking the water from his stinging eyes, and... it was just an afterimage. Keith sighed. He had been promised answers but all he had now were more questions.

"Are you really my mom's blade?" Keith interrogated the sword. "If she was Galra... what was she doing on Earth?" The blade gleamed silently back. Then, as if in answer to his questions, something tickled the periphery of his consciousness.

"Red?" he asked aloud, reaching out to the faint whisper, inviting it deeper. But this was earthier, like... "Quiznak." As soon as Keith recognized Blue's Energy he was hit again with the melancholy of Lance's stupid feelings. Keith groaned and let his head fall forward between his knees. If he could just focus on the tightness along his spine as it curved and stretched forward...

The Blue Energy crackled with electricity, and Keith's thoughts flocked to it like moths to a bug zapper.

_Why can't he just deal with his shit like a normal person?_ Keith thought with a flash of irrational anger. He knew he was being unfair, but he missed the moments when the Energy was quieter, subtler: when he and Lance expelled their tension in petty quarrels. But that wasn't Lance's fault. Keith was the one routing around someone else's head. However unintentionally. 

Pulling back up to a seat, elbows resting on his knees, Keith looked at the knife again. He didn't really feel up to facing anyone, not with the welcome he'd had earlier. But he wasn't going to find any answers sitting in bed. Keith rose to his feet and faced his door. There were better ways to learn.

 

The Castleship's library was a museum of Altean text, from scrolls and manuscripts to computer databases and holographic picture books. The relics of a lost world. Keith tiptoes through its relative darkness, admiring the visible diversity of the collection. Allura's father must have known his civilization was at and end, that this Castle was the only way to preserve its history, its culture, his daughter...

 

Pidge's translation algorithm would work for information stored digitally, but the print documents, the placards that labelled and organized the archive had to be scanned individually if anyone wanted to decipher them. Keith started with the database, trying to intuit his way through Altean interface and Pidge's programs. Nothing was user-friendly.

"How can I search this... " Keith mused, looking down at the retconned keyboard he'd plugged in to the database. His input options were English or Altean - no way to search for his Galra character. "Okay... Galra... dictionary..." he typed, watching the Latin letters change to Altean as he touched the holoscreen to search. A shelf of digital titles appeared before him.

" _Galra Primer_..." he read under his breath. " _Doomish Dialects..._  weird. Hm... _Advanced Galran Grammer..._ no, no - here:  _Galra-Altean Phrasebook_." He plucked the holographic volume from the air in front of him and opened it in front of him. The wall of Altean text that crowded the first page shifted in front of his eyes and reconfigured itself into English.

_Essential Galra phrases and cultural advice for the Altean vacationer..._ Keith skimmed through the first couple of pages looking for the index: 

"Here...  _Ordering Food... Buying Souvenirs... Asking Directions_..." Keith ran his finger down the list of sections and their page numbers. Finally, at the bottom:  _Word List_ with subsections  _Altean-Galra_ and  _Galra-Altean_.

"Page 209," Keith read aloud, and watched the virtual pages turn for him. His heart picked up a little as the a list of Galra words and their Altean translations appeared on the before him. The text quickly rearranged itself, morphing into English, and... Keith snorted in disappointment. The Galra words had translated too, leaving him a list of English words with definitions in English.

"No!" he hissed at the machine. "How do I... Undo! Un-translate. Um. Translate Altean only?" the computer stared back at him blankly. "Shit... I need Pidge. Or Allura..."

As if on cue, the melodic voice of the Princess carried over the stacks and shelves from another corner of the library. Quiet and curious, Keith followed the sound until he came on a soft light filtering through a rack of tapestries.

" 'Galra are a race of Doomish sentients who distinguish' - "

"Doomish sentients?" asked a second voice. Keith peaked from behind his curtain of tapestries and saw Shiro seated across from Allura on a horseshoe of couches. His face and the back of her hair gleamed golden in the light of a small orb that floated behind Allura's head like a miniature sun. She looked up from the book she was reading from - translating, Keith realized - answer Shiro's query.

“Sentient beings native to the planet Doom.”

“Okay. Keep going."

" - 'who distinguish themselves by their monochromatic purple skin and thick body hair...' - none of this information is relevant, Shiro. You don't need to know - "

“I want to know!” Keith cried without thinking. Allura’s head spun to search along the wall of tapestries, and Keith hesitated for a moment before stepping into view. As soon as he moved her eyes locked on him, cautious and inscrutible. Shiro’s expression was kinder, almost relieved.

“Keith! Where have you been? I was looking for you. I…” he side-eyed Allura. “I wanted to talk. If you’re up to it.” 

“I was in my room. Then I left.” He said curtly.

“Do... you want to join us?” Shiro offered, head tilting. Allura stayed still, watching without comment. Keith mulled over a response until a bellow from behind startled him out of his thoughts.

“Shiro, Allura! Oh, and hello, number four.”

Allura's eyes finally moved away from Keith to rest on the intruder.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Coran continued, “but Hunk wanted everyone to know that dinner is ready! Come on, come on, can't leave our guests waiting - let's show some royal Altean hospitality, hm?”

Keith's stomach sank, any appetite he'd had edged out by the nerves tingling through his stomach - but he followed them to the dining room.

 

~

 

The atmosphere was uneasy at their evening meal; tensions seemed to have eased less than the Black Paladin had hoped. Only the Green Paladin, Pidge, seemed comfortable; her easy and excited questions pierced the thick air like a bright bold of electricity. 

“What is your home planet?” she asked, holoscreen up next to her food.

“That world is long since laid barren by the cost of war," Kolivan replied. "My species are spread across the known universe, and I was birthed in space.”

“Interesting,” she mumbled, tapping out a few notes between bites of the Yellow One's lumpy creation - space-chicken cordon goo, he had called it. “Now, when _was_ your planet destroyed? Also... how are Galra conceived and born, if I may ask?”

The Red Paladin made a choking protest.

“You can’t just - !” 

Kolivan surveyed the boy's coloring face with interest and surprise. After all the secrets and sensitive information he had demanded at their base, a question of basic biology fazed him?

“Our reproductive habits are no secret. They are well known on many planets,” boasted Antok, oblivious to the boy's obvious distress. “We are conceived when two viable sires deposit genetic material into a third host, who then carries the child to term.” 

"And your planet?" Pidge prompted, jotting down a few quick notes.

“The planet Doom was destroyed over ten thousand years ago,” Kolivan said carefully, “as our hosts know well.” 

He didn’t expect the revelation to be met with a laugh. 

“Sorry… sorry…” the Yellow Paladin hurried to say, covering his mouth with both hands. “It’s just… your planet was called _Doom_?” 

“Yes,” Kolivan confirmed, more puzzled than offended.

“Hunk…” Pidge looked up from her notes, groaning. The Yellow One had at least the good grace to look embarrassed. 

“Anyway…” Pidge's eyes scanned over what she’d written out. “Oh yeah, procreation. So the host contributes no genetic information to the fetus? Do both sets of code need to be deposited simultaneously?” 

There was a cough from the other end of the table and Shiro stood awkwardly.

“Um. Pidge... out of… courtesy to others - ” he began, glancing conspicuously at the Red Paladin, “ - I must ask that we restrict our conversation to… dinner appropriate topics.” 

Pidge made a sound of displeasure and contorted her face.

“Forgive me,” Kolivan apologized. “I did not mean to offend your culture or traditions. What it is your custom to discuss at meals?” 

For some time there was no answer, and Kolivan wondered if humans normally ate in silence. Finally, the large one spoke.

“...Weather?” he suggested, but all that followed was more silence. “S - sports? School? What’s going on in each other’s lives, I… anyone else is welcome to jump in at any time…”

“Yes, um, thank you, Hunk,” said Shiro. “Maybe we should stick to matters of business. Share strategy, intel?”

“Very well,” Kolivan agreed.

 

The meeting carried on past dinner and spilled into the ship's bridge as Kolivan shared the broad brushstrokes of their strategy.

"...with these small attacks we are whittling away the empire's cohesion. It has grown more disjointed in recent decafeebs and is, according to our models, on the brink of collapse."

"That's it?" Shiro pressed.

"Yes," Kolivan confirmed, "but I see that you are not satisfied. What would you do?"

"Strike!" The Black Paladin exclaimed. Kolivan observed his passion with approval as Shiro continued. "If the empire is weak now is the time to attack them head on. Voltron is on your side! What do you have to lose?"

"Everything," Antok answered. Shiro, to his credit, seemed to realize the thoughtlessness of the question. Kolivan elaborated:

"Our order has failed in the past," he explained, "to great ruin. But we persist, and our follies have taught us caution. We agree that the return of Voltron strengthens our hand. But as long as Zarkon maintains a bond with the Black Lion, we cannot risk its falling into his hands.

"That bond is weakened," The Princess spoke, for the first time in hours. "Zarkon is losing ground on all fronts. We have the power to end his reign; inaction gives him the freedom to terrorize and enslave with impunity."

"Allura's right!" the Yellow Paladin agreed. "I've seen what he does to innocent people and I - I can't just stand by and let him keep doing that! Not if we can stop him for good!" 

"I agree with you," Kolivan assured them, "but we cannot be reckless. There is too much at stake. Now we look forward to hearing your ideas. Together we can build a plan of attack that is bold but foolproof."

"Can we, like, take a break first?" requested the Blue Paladin. "I've been awake way too long to make any life-or-death decisions."

Kolivan eyed him with distaste.

"You insist on both action and rest," growled Antok, "but we can deliver only one."

"No, hold on," Pidge cut in. Kolivan trusted her words more than the others', and he could tell Antok felt the same. 

"Humans have less endurance than Galra," the child explained. "We _need_ to rest every twelve hours or so, or our minds can't function efficiently."

"What she said," the Blue One yawned.

Kolivan yielded. 

"When do we reconvene?"

"Give us eight vargas," Shiro decided. "We'll meet again over breakfast."

"Agreed."

With that the party splintered into their various nightly activities. Kolivan was retreating to his own quarters when a voice that rang out behind him.

“Hey! Wait.”

It was the Red Paladin, burning with resentment. 

“Speak, boy,” Kolivan invited without turning around.

“You answered a lot of questions at dinner today, but you still haven’t answered any of mine.”

“You will learn your answers in time.”

“I need to know _now_!” the boy gritted out. “Have the Galra… has the Blade ever been to Earth? Tell me!” 

“Patience is a trait you must cultivate if you wish to challenge Zarkon’s rule,” Kolivan chided. But he turned to face the Paladin, signalling his openness to a longer conversation. 

“Maybe your _patience_ ,” the child spat back, “is the reason he’s been ruling for so long!”

“You understand nothing.”

“Because you _won’t tell me anything_! I awakened my Blade! I - knowledge or death, you said, well, I didn’t get either!”

Kolivan watched the boy stare up with angry eyes and heaving shoulders. As the silence persisted the his breathing slowed, and he found a measure of calm before trying again.

“Please. Can you at least tell me if you’ve come across any other humans in your travels? Are we the - the first people you’ve seen from Earth?” 

Kolivan appraised him calmly for a moment before responding.

“Yes,” he said finally. “You are the first inhabitants of Earth I personally have seen.”

There was a change in the boy’s expression, enough to let Kolivan know he had caught the nugget of truth buried in his vagaries. 

“You must understand something, child, if you aspire to our Order: the loss of a life is to us an inconvenience, a daily routine. The loss of a secret? Could render that sacrifice vain. Can you promise to guard our knowledge with your life?”

The boy hesitated, but nodded.

“Good. You will know everything when you are ready,” Kolivan reiterated, and disappeared finally into the privacy of his room.

 

~

 

Keith was sleeping soundly when the ship’s alarm blared, dragging him out of a troubled dream and into endorphin-heightened awareness.

“What happened?” he cried minutes later as he stumbled onto the bridge.

“A Galra battlecruiser has appeared in our airspace,” Allura explained as the rest of the team trickled in, “but so far it has taken no action.”

“This is concerning,” noted Antok. “It is not the practice of Zarkon’s generals to shy away from battle unless they have some darker purpose.”

Allura frowned.

“They’re hailing us on a video channel,” announced Coran.

“Put it on the scre - ”

“Wait!” Kolivan interrupted Allura’s order, to her visible annoyance.

“Forgive me, Princess, but if we are to open a video channel with a ship of Zarkon’s fleet, it is wise that my companion and I remove ourselves.”

Allura gave a grudging nod. Pidge straightened in her seat.

“I might have something that can help!” she declared. “I've been experimenting with - give me two doboshes!” she added over her shoulder as she darted from the room.

“Um... Antok and I will therefore listen from the corridor," Kolivan continued, leading his junior officer to the door Pidge had just disappeared through. They had just reached the threshold when Pidge was bouncing off Antok’s waist as she ran back onto the bridge. She barely even acknowledged the collision, standing up and shaking her head and holding up a sleek white body suit.

"Okay so... this is just a prototype, but it should adjust to fit the body, just like our Paladin armor does. Be careful, though - it's the only one I have!" She thrust the suit into Kolivan's clawed hands and watched expectantly.

"...Thank you. May I ask - "

"Put it on!" she insisted. "I wanna see how it works."

Kolivan pulled the garment on over his Marmorite armor, suit stretching impossibly to accommodate him.

Then he disappeared from view.

"Passable, very good..." Pidge murmured to herself, circling around the space where Kolivan had been standing. "Minor visual distortion, I'll have to work on that... how does it fit, Kol? Can I call you that?"

“Proceed with communications,” came his disembodied voice. Coran put the video on the screen.

 

The image of a thin and angular lilac-skinned Galra filled the air before them. Keith felt a cold flame of foreboding, but he couldn’t tell if it came from him, his Lion, or the Blue Energy.

“And I was beginning to think you were ignoring me,” their caller said in a smooth voice. 

“What do you want!” said Allura. The Galra smirked and tucked a lock of storm-white hair behind his pointed ear.

“My name,” he drawled. “Is Prince Lotor. I may have acquired something... someone” - Lotor looked up at them from his fanned out claws - “that may be of more value to you than it is to me.”

Shiro startled and glanced at Pidge. Lotor’s lip quirked up, then down, his head tilting a fraction of a degree to his left. Shiro spoke next.

“What makes you think you have anything we want?” he demanded. Lotor’s eyes sparked and his smile returned full force.

“It is my understanding,” he beamed, “that humans harbor close familial ties.” Pidge tensed at this, and Hunk put his hand on her shoulder.

“My own progenitor - long may he reign over many stars - has been somewhat distant, somewhat _preoccupied_ of late, and I intend to bring him a gift to… court his affections anew.”

“Dude, gross, don’t talk about your family that way!”

“Lance,” scolded Shiro.

Lance sulked deeper into his chair, looking wounded and embarrassed. Lotor, by contrast, seemed unfazed. He licked his lips and waited for silence before delivering the message he had come to relay. 

“The choice of gift,” he purred, “is yours. My prisoner? Or… the Black Lion.” A feral grin glinted across his pale purple face. Pidge sprang to her feet, knocking Hunk’s comforting hand from her arm.

“Give me back my father you - you - son of a _bitch_!” she screeched. Hunk leaned back, eyes bright with alarm and concern.

Lotor only laughed.

“Do - I do not understand, do you mean that as an insult, pup?”

Pidge made as to speak again, but Shiro silenced her with a stern shake of his head. Keith heard Kolivan whisper,

_“Have him show us his prisoner.”_

Shiro repeated the request.

"Of course." Lotor then seemed to grow taller - he was standing - and disappeared from the frame. “Five ticks,” he assured them. Kolivan spoke up again, addressing Allura this time.

“You _cannot_ negotiate with this man, Princess,” he hissed. "Zarkon cannot regain possession of the Black Lion, and we have no reason to trust the word of his son - it is said he practices a special brand of cruelty."

“Wow, Zarkon has a son?” Lance interrupted. “Sounds like bad news, glad we haven’t run into _him_ \- ”

Keith turned and stared. "Um... Lance..."

“What?? ...Wait. Oh. Oh, god, you mean when…” Lance trailed off as Lotor reappeared on screen, chain dangling from his palm and trailing out of frame.

“Come say hi, human bitch,” he sang. Pidge clenched her fists and growled.

 

*******

 

_“For centuries we thought ourselves a lone blue lifeboat in a sea of black… a small blue… how did Sagan put it? A ‘pale blue dot,’ yes… ‘everyone you love, everyone you’ve ever known or heard of’..._

_“This may be our greatest threat.”_

 

*******


	3. Search and Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lotor shows the team his hostage, and they must decide whether or not to accept his deal.

Desperate for information, Colleen sorted through her daughter's belongings as she had her husband's and son's. She made piles of things she would never part with: computer parts, book reports, pages of notes and doodles. Carefully she leafed through them all but found nothing of use - until, rifling through Katie's old backpack, she pulled out a crumpled paper with a wad of gum stuck to the corner. It full of her daughter's messy script.

“A cipher…?” Colleen muttered, looking at long strings of nonsense punctuated with blanks for missing words. It looked like one of the logic puzzles Katie had been fond of solving although hers usually contained more numbers. As Colleen scanned down the page, the strings of letters started to take the shape of familiar words, and blanks began to fill.

“Help…” she read, “Help… help….” The next words were more nonsense. Then… _empire_ , that one Colleen could decipher. Next came _Earth_. Colleen’s heart jumped to her throat as _Earthlings_ started popping up across the page. She tried not to read too much into that, but the implications were hard to ignore.  _Sam and Matt disappear searching for signs of alien life, now Katie is missing after... after...?_ Colleen skimmed down the page to get a better idea of what exactly her daughter had found.

To her disappointment, it just started talking about cats.

"Oh, come on, go back to the Earthlings!” she murmured. _Though I guess cats_ are  _Earthlings too._ Maybe there was some connection.

"[The] cat [is] on Earth. Cats [will/can?] help [us?]," she read on eagerly. "Blue...  _Blue Cat_?"

Then again, maybe not. With a frustrated sigh, Colleen turned the paper over to check the back: more words, fewer blanks. Annotations and question marks in the margins, words struck through and amended, making it harder and harder to read.

At the bottom of the page was a bulleted list in block letters.

 

\- Infiltrate Garrison - alias “Pidge G.”

  * Haircut ✓


  * Toothbrush ✓


  * Radio scanner ✓


  * Antiperspirant



 - Jimenez-Johnson Files

 - Desert?

 - Cat cave??

 

"Oh... oh, Katie..." 

Colleen stared at the list, eyes moist. If a small part of her heart was holding on to the hope that Commander Iverson had been all-out lying rather than simply withholding information, it now let go, and all her unreasonable, conspiratorial suspicions rushed to fill it. As Colleen studied the end of the list, her eyes came to rest on the final point. The word _cat_ was marked through, and she squinted to read the suggested replacements.

“Lion?” she sounded out. And next to that, “Panther?”

 _Panther Cave_... that was a name Colleen had encountered before. She pulled up a database on her pocket computer and searched the term.

 

~

 

"Come say hi, human bitch."

Pidge stood rigid, fists clenched in the silence that smothered the bridge like a damp cloth. Her breath caught; her brow furrowed; the prisoner materialized at the end of Lotor's chain. Lunging forward with wet eyes Pidge choked on the first note of a sob. The rest got stuck in her throat like a strangled question mark.

Standing before them was a dark haired, dark eyed woman.

“It was no easy feat," Lotor was saying nonchalantly, "snatching her from Earth - a planet Father had always forbade me to visit. Before, that is - before… well, you,” he gestured at the Paladins, his lips curled up in a twisted grin. “Anyway, I extracted her from the protection of your little leaders, and would be happy to make a present of her and all her secrets.”

Pidge shivered, looking to Shiro and Allura to see how they would respond. It was Keith who spoke first.

“Who are you?” he whispered, voice trembling.

“Dude,” Lance stage whispered behind a cupped hand. “It’s Lotor. Pay attention.”

Keith ignored him.

“Who are you,” he repeated, words clawing out of his dry throat like skeletons, “and why do you keep looking at me like that?”

Lotor scoffed.

“Do you not even know the face of the bitch who bare you?”

Mute and unmoving Keith stood and stared back with quivering lips, jaw slack.

“Mom…?” he breathed breathlessly, then, louder, “Mom, my - my mom was Galra! You’re lying, you… you…”

“Is that what you think, mongrel?” Lotor jeered, mouth twitching with temper (or pleasure). “Ha! Your blood is muddier than you realize.”

“What - what is that supposed to mean!” Keith snarled back. Lotor only laughed.

“I will allow you one half varga’s deliberation. Return to me with your decision.”

With that his image faded into the star-studded black of space.

Pidge let out a breath she’d never realized she was holding. It wasn’t her dad. They didn’t have… they didn’t know about her dad, Matt - or at least she could still believe that. But… of all the people Lotor could have snatched - all the friends, relations - why...?

“Tell me what he meant!” Keith wheeled around to yell at empty air. “Did you know that woman? Was that really... really my mom?”

Kolivan’s head appeared first, body filling out from neck to toes as he removed the invisible armor.

“Keith…” Shiro stepped into the space Keith left for Kolivan’s answer, and his voice was both gentle and stern. “We’ll have time for this later, Keith. Right now we have twenty-nine doboshes to form with a plan of action.”

Keith punched his consul.

“You come up with a plan. I’ve got a plan. I’m going over to save her. Maybe _she’ll_ talk to me. Even if she’s not my mom, she knows _something_.”

With a sigh Shiro came up behind Keith to put a firm metal hand on his shoulder.

"Keith..."

“The boy is right about one thing," Kolivan said: "this woman has information. If she has intelligence concerning the Blade, we must keep her from Zarkon at all costs.”

“Excuse me?” Allura shot back. “Just moments ago you had the nerve to _command_ me not to treat with his man, but now that your own hide is on the line...”

“Princess," Kolivan entreated, "please understand what is at stake. It is more than me and my resistance: it’s all of your allies, those they protect, anyone who stands against Zarkon openly or in secret.”

“Tell him we’ll send over Red, instead of the Black Lion,” insisted Keith, trying to shake off Shiro's hand. “I’ll take her over and infiltrate the ship.”

“That’s a terrible plan!” screeched Lance. “Let’s form Voltron and take this asshole down!”

"Besides, if anyone's Lion is going over it'll be mine," Pidge reasoned. "I'm the only one with cloaking! I can follow Black over and sneak her out when it's safe."

"You really think they wouldn't pick up something that big?" argued Keith. "Anyway, if you did get in what would you do? Carry the Black Lion out on Green's back?"

"Hey, it's not any worse that anyone else's ideas..."

"Wrong! Voltron would - "

" - crumble against Lotor like coal striking diamond," Antok supplied. "We have no option but to give into his demands."

"That is _not_ an option that we have!" said Allura.

"Hold on, now, I've got an idea," Coran chimed in. "Let me talk to him! I'll put on the old charm, haggle him down a little. You see, the trick is to make them think they're getting the better deal - "

"Or he will trick _you_ into handing over the whole team," warned Kolivan. "We must yield."

"Why, I - !"

"Shiro," Allura cut in. "You haven't said anything yet. Black is your Lion. As the leader of Voltron, what do you think we should do?"

The bags under Shiro’s eyes and the stubble on his chin were as stark against his pale face as the shock of white against his hair.

“We can't risk giving up two Lions, and we can’t attack him while he has a hostage. We have to send him the Black Lion.”

“What - Shiro! No!” Allura protested.

“Don’t worry.” Shiro put a hand on Keith’s shoulder and addressed the group. “I know something Lotor doesn’t, and it could work to our advantage. We’ll need a little time to prepare, but hear me out.”

 

~

 

Thirteen doboshes later, Coran pulled Lotor’s image back onto the main screen. 

“Alright now, Lotor!” he sniggered. “Sorry, that’s a silly name. Anyway, I’m here to offer you a counter offer! You give us the human and in exchange… I’ll give you this lovely Olkarian cube - watch!” Coran released the toy into the air and giggled.

“Prince Lotor, Prince Lotor, the best thing since _foltor_!” he chanted, adding as an aside, “ _Foltor_ is an exciting sex act.”

Lotor looked about as impressed as Coran had expected; that is, not at all.

“I admit it’s not my best work, but I’m sure someone as bright as you could come up with one better.”

“Where is the rest of your crew?”

“They’ve chosen me, as leader, to negotiate on their behalf - you know I once traded one of these beauties for a whole stack of antique scaltrite lenses.” Coran winked.

“My progenitor has no need for that. I shall take him the bitch and leave.

“Wait! It’s just that, well, the Black Lion is really important to us we seem to be getting the unpolished end of the crystal here! So how about we offer you… ehm…”

“The trade of the Black Lion is not negotiable. But perhaps I can add something to sweeten the deal? Your Paladins’ home. Earth. I can guarantee the safety of that planet in whatever conflict that follows.You might find it a pleasant place to retire.”

Coran shrugged - worth a try, at least. 

“Coran," Allura's voice crackled through his earcomm. "Everything is in place.”

“Splendid!” he replied. “We will send the Black Lion over with his pilot. Send your captive out to meet him. Once her identity is confirmed, our pilot will eject and you will be free to collect the Lion.”

A discomfiting smile curled over Lotor’s thin face.

“Agreed.”

 

~

 

Shiro settled into the pilot seat of his Lion, heartbeat steady but fast as he guided her out of the hangar and toward the Galra ship. There he waited as a few anxious minutes ticked by.

A small figure, grey against the vacuum of space, floated into his line of sight. As the figure neared, he could make out the same dark hair and eyes they had seen barely an hour before.

“Okay,” Shiro confirmed. “I’m leaving my Lion.”

He swam out of Black’s mouth, thrusters steering him toward the released prisoner. Her arms stretched toward him, but as Shiro grabbed her by the shoulders, her arms kept stretching, trying to push him away.

“You cannot let him take the Lion!” the woman implored.

“Don’t worry, we’re not.”

Shiro tightened his grip, pulling the woman close so he could hold her with one arm, and maneuvering back toward the Castleship. It was surprisingly slow going without the Lion - they must have been farther away than Shiro had judged. With an uneasy feeling he upped the power on his thrusters, anxious to get back safe.

The Castle still wasn’t getting any closer.

Looking behind him, Shiro saw his Lion bathed in neon light. It was at the center of a wide tractor beam and floating slowly toward the Galra ship. The edge of that purple glow was at his ankles, creeping up his shins and pulling them in. Shiro froze in panic, icy fingers of dread clawing down from his heart and throat to meet the advancing purple light. For a brief moment he was wholly paralyzed, transported to the hopeless confines of the gladiator ring, the impregnable closeness of his cell.

Then the rescued prisoner twisted in his hold. Shiro's arm tightened around her reflexively but his body flailed with hers, struggling against the tug of the beam. The more they moved, the further they sunk into its pull. Shiro cursed.

“You have to get back to the Lion,” exclaimed the woman, “it’s strong enough to break free!”

“No!” Shiro said. “If we try to take it back now he’ll overcome us. I don’t know if we’re ready for that fight. But we have a plan - we just have to get out of this tractor beam.”

“There are only two ways out,” she insisted. “One is your Lion.”

“And the other?”

The prisoner grabbed onto Shiro’s arms. “Turn your thrusters back on.”

“I don’t see how - ”

“Shut up and trust me.”

Looking into the woman’s eyes Shiro caught a familiar glint of determination. Nodding, he did as she had said. The thrusters’ blue fire shot out, straining against the Galra cruiser’s grasp. For half a tick Shiro sputtered forward with a burst of hope, but then they were slipping backwards again.

Then the woman jerked her torso to the left, escaping the hook of Shiro’s arm and grabbing his wrists in one fluid motion. The momentum sent them into a spin that Shiro's thrusters accelerated faster, faster, until finally the woman let go. 

“Wait! Hey!”

Stars swirled in the magenta tinted space around him as Shiro propelled backward out of the beam’s line of traction. Adjusting his thrusters to still the dizzying inertia of his spin, he turned to see the woman floating in the opposite direction, body slowing as it tumbled through the field of the the beam.

She broke free just in time, coming to a stop right outside the purple light. Her legs kicked out on instinct and her hands paddled through the frictionless void. Shiro adjusted his course, breath fast and loud in his ears.

“Hold on, I’m coming!” he called pointlessly. Without thrusters of her own the woman was helpless to move. Still her limbs flailed in vain crawl stroke.

As they moved, her hand slipped back into the light.

Shiro’s breath hitched. He sped up, reaching out his arm. The beam had already swallowed most of hers.

“I’ve got you!” he called. “Give me your hand!”

“No! You can’t risk getting caught too!” 

“I can’t leave without you!” Shiro insisted, reaching, reaching. “The whole trade will have been for nothing!”

“It will be worse if a Paladin is captured!” Only the woman's other forearm now broke the border of the beam.  Shiro pulled up abreast of her, just outside the sickly purple glow. His arm reached out the light but didn’t touch it.

“Just get your hand out to mine. I’ll be able to pull you free,” Shiro promised. The woman stretched her arm toward him, fingertips barely clearing the border of the light...

 

*******

 

_“Dont worry. I know something Lotor doesn’t. In fact, I know something that none of you know yet either. Keith can pilot the Black Lion.”_

_“...Tell us your plan.”_

 

********

 

The Black Energy hummed around Keith’s body as he counted away the ticks, eyes closed. It was solid, more stable than Red’s or Blue’s, but deep sown with conflict and confusion. He could feel the undercurrent of uncertainty permeating it like dark matter across empty space.

Keith tried to look through the Lion’s eyes, but she wouldn’t let him in, or he couldn’t find the way. So he probed the silence outside her hull, listening for any signs of movement. After several long moments footsteps echoed faintly up through Black’s open mouth.

“How _grand_ ,” spat a smooth, venomous voice from just outside Black’s shields. Its owner knocked against the force field and growled. “How do I open you? Your quintessence, so guarded… You think you are smarter than me, machine? Someday, when I ascend to my father’s throne, I will wield you like the weapon you are.”

Keith shivered. Black’s Energy was hardening around him, growing thicker and more oblique, closing Keith out. There was a dull thud from outside and Lotor cursed.

“Someday! Someday you will yield to me. You will submit.” Footsteps sounded again, echoing through what must have been a small hangar, but this time they were fading. A door opened and shut.

Keith let his shallow breaths deepen again. His chest was heaving with adrenaline and relief. For several more minutes he did not move. Then finally, he poked his head out through Black’s mouth. The hangar was dark and empty. Keith dropped noiselessly to the floor.

To his left, behind Black, he could see a bay door - so if he could find some way to open it…

The Black Energy softened for him again, a comforting presence to which he could anchor his humming nerves. Keith latched onto it as he cast around for a control panel - this Energy was calm and centering, almost like having Shiro at his side.

But that backdrop of swirling self-doubt…

It had grown stronger since Keith left the Lion, taking on notes of loss and longing. A familiar watery hue...

Keith froze, letting waves of the Blue Energy swallow him in their high tide. His heart skipped then sunk like a stone - it was the same pull he’d felt a lifetime ago in the desert, radiating from the heart of the ship.

Keith’s eyes finally landed on the hangar’s controls, a little further down toward the bay door. He made a mental note of their location then turned to face the opposite direction. If Blue - if _Lance_ was on Lotor’s ship, something had gone terribly wrong, and Keith could no longer stick to the plan. Without another thought he plunged through the doorway leading out to the rest of the ship, fingers reflexively tapping out a rhythm Shiro had drummed into him over countless training sessions.

 

It didn’t take Keith long to realize the sentries on this ship didn’t follow the patterns he had learned. After a couple of close encounters, he gave up on his tapping fingers and put all his trust in Pidge’s cloaking armor. It swaddled his body like cellophane, effective and unnerving. Keith couldn’t even see the tip of his own nose between his eyes. So he looked around him instead.

The first thing he noticed were the sentries. The were decorated - dressed in robes of luminescent fabric, draped with precious metals thinly beaten and braided or woven into fine filigrees.

Lush curtains covered the dull, Galra-grey walls of the ship. They were scattered with an assortment of mounted and mismatched artifacts Keith took to be the relics of conquered worlds: Bright and polished gems. Statues of wood or ivory or gold. Portraits of landscapes, of Lotor in military dress, of a woman bearing a striking resemblance to the Mona Lisa…

Other than the ornamented sentries, the ship seemed unlived-in. No Galra, no -

"MMMGGHMmmmm!" Keith swallowed a scream as he rounded a corner and came face-to-face with the blooming tentacles and intelligent eyes of a giant, winged cephalopod. It was reaching for him, its body painted with bold patterns and designs that bled onto the silver shell it wore like a helmet. Keith didn't move. Neither did the creature. It was perfectly still and, Keith noticed finally, entombed in the soft grey light of a cryopod.

Keith let his breath out and took a step back from the captured alien. Lining the hall he had just entered were dozens of cryopods at regular intervals like columns against the walls. Each held a different species of alien, frozen in statuesque poses like wax models in a museum. Watching them warily as he passed, Keith noticed most of the creatures appeared frozen in throes of agony.

Ripping his eyes from the harrowing decor, Keith pushed on, following the Blue Energy as the sea chases the moon.

At a crossroads he hesitated, spun like the needle of a compass, and took off down a left-leading hallway deeper into the ship. Distractions faded into the periphery as Keith’s focus honed in a dark gate, looming on the horizon ahead and overtaking his field of vision. He stopped just before it: the yawning entrance to a dark and cavernous room.

Squinting into the dim light Keith could see pillars of stone that disappeared into the blackness above, and wide steps climbing the room’s far walls like seats at an amphitheater. He lingered at the door even as the Energy tugged him forward.

Shadows flitting between the bases of the stone pillars seemed to part at random, like a sheer curtain over a phantom world. Keith stared, transfixed, trying to make sense of the shapes shifting in the twilight before him. Indecipherable whispers echoed in the blood rushing through his inner ears.

Finally, swallowing hard and setting his jaw, Keith stepped over the threshold and into the arena beyond.

 

~

 

“Whoremonger! Acknowledge receipt!” Lotor commanded the static crackling out of his communication hardware. “Acknowledge your son! Lotor! Druid of Altea and heir to the Galra territories!”

“ _I am either indisposed or uninterested in your call. Send your message through official channels or keep it to yourself_.”

The bored voice of his progenitor, rambling off a pre-recorded denial.

“ _AUuughgghH!_ ” the Prince wailed, crushing the equipment with his fist. “Stop ignoring me! I will be honored above the witch! I will remake the Universe in my image! Petty prince over a fiefdom of rock and ice no more! _Heat death of the Universe, ultimate fate of your Empire -_ guards! Guards! Repair damage to the transmitter - _and bring me a drink_!”

Sentries materialized within ticks of his command and Lotor felt that much calmer - at least there would always be someone in the universe to answer his calls. A sentry in a gem-crusted gold collar approached him with a barrel perched over one shoulder and a flagon in its hand.

“Lithor!” the Prince accepted the cup, plucked a rock of sodium bismuthate salt from the citrus and nunville drink. He crushed the salt between his teeth and chewed as he spoke. “My most trusted Lithor, am I not Zarkon’s one and only heir?”

“Insufficient data, my Prince.”

“ _Humor me Lithor_!”

“Of course, my Prince: why did the Weblum cross the asteroid belt?”

“Crosswired scrap heap! See that my urgent message is relayed to Lord Zarkon. Then summon my officers and advisors. I will host a game!"

“Yes, my Prince.”

 

~

 

The air was close and hot and buzzing with sparrow-sized flies. Keith’s flight suit clung to him like a sweaty second skin. His boots squelched in calf-deep mud.

 _The Black Lion_ , Keith thought as he pivoted in circles around the same spot. _Lance!_

A tangle of ropy vines had swaddled his limbs and body like the threads of a spider web, hanging down from a canopy of thorned branches and leathery leaves. There was no gate behind him and no pillars in front - only red sunlight flitting over the bent black trunks of alien trees.

Keith’s bayard cut through the vines with no resistance. He stilled to listen, ears straining against his own rushing blood. The whispers he had heard outside the room were amplified into wailing cries that oscillated with each rapid pulse of his heart.

The sounds were coming from somewhere behind and to the left of him, though it was impossible to tell how far off. As he listened they seemed to grow less abstract, shape themselves into English, but they were too faint for him to make out. Tucking his bayard back into his armor, Keith turned to face the source of the noise. He had to get to Lance and get off Lotor's ship before they reached Zarkon. Tightening his grip on his bayard, Keith sloshed forward through the slime.

"Home!" he heard several paces along as he skirted another tangle of vines. "Our home! We're back!"

Suddenly, popping in and out of the bog around him was a small swarm of spindly, six-legged creatures,all too coated in mud for Keith to clearly make out. Their long tongues flicked out to grab winged insects from the air.

“A miracle! It lives! Our home!”

There was a dozen of them or so, waist-high and rollicking in the muck. A single voice rose above the others.

“Hivesisters! Sisters, listen!” the creatures stopped and turned to the sound, tongues flicking idly out between their mandibles.

“If this is our home, then where is our hive? Where are our neighbors, our drones? Our young?”

“They were Destroyed,” another argued back, voice wavering. The others took up her anguished cries.

“Then where is the Destruction?” buzzed the dissenting voice. The crying halted and the creatures looked around in confusion.

“Queen?” they asked. “My Queen?”

There was a fluttering from above. Keith looked up to see a set of iridescent wings scattering the dim red light like a moonbow across a thin mist. They descended, carrying the emerald green body of a larger, fatter creature down from amid shaking leaves. She was clean of mud, and Keith could see a slender tail that tapered to a gleaming point, and a pair of multifaceted cinnabar eyes.

“Daughters,” said the Queen, “remember how we came here. This is not our home.”

Keith listened intently, trying to work out the situation himself.

“Our home is gone. We were betrayed.”

No sooner had those words been spoken than flames leapt up from the foliage and spread out across the landscape. The swamp bubbled around Keith’s feet, and even with two layers of armor he could feel the heat against his skin. The creatures were hopping from leg to leg, shrieking. In a panic their Queen fluttered around above them, looking from left to right.

A smooth, familiar voice rose supernaturally over the din, permeating the strange world.

“Those who survive will be freed, those who die will be free. Begin!”

“Lotor!” screamed the Queen. “It’s one of his games!”

She picked up her nearest daughter and made for a peak of rock jutting up from a nearby clearing. There was no way they were going to all make it. Keith grimaced. If he helped these people he would blow his own cover - and even then, what could he do?

Then, for the first time since he had entered the illusion, Keith felt the Blue Energy. It was communicating directly now rather than filtering passively through his awareness. His right arm tingled and itched suddenly to move, Energy flowing to his fingertips and out toward luxite blade strapped to his right thigh.

With one confident stroke, Keith unsheathed the knife slashed down across the empty space in front of him.

The illusion offered no resistance to the blade; it ruptured and dissolved around him.

 

~

 

“I have confirmation from Shiro that he has _the package_ ,” Coran announced to the Paladins. Lance snorted as Shiro shot out of Black’s mouth,

“Like a hairball, oh my god!”

Hunk joined in the joke.

“Haha, Shiro will get a kick out of that! Hairball…”

“Hey,” Pidge said in muted alarm. “Not to put a damper on your shits and giggles, but - ”

“Whoa, hey no, they...” Lance stuttered in surprise. “Coran! He has them in the tractor beam, we have to call and...”

“It won’t do any good,” scoffed Antok. “He was planning this from the beginning.”

“You knew that and you didn’t _say_ \- ”

“Lance…” Allura intervened in Shiro’s absence.

“Okay, okay, but now - Shiro, _and_ Keith’s mom or whatever, _and_ the entire Black Lion? How’s Keith gonna get them all… this wasn’t the plan!”

“Lance! It’s okay, hey, look Lance: they’re out!”

Lance followed Hunk’s finger to the Castleship’s panoramic front window. Shiro and Keith’s mom were spinning in opposite directions out of the tractor beam.

“Whoa. Alright!”

The cheer had barely left Lance’s lips when Keith’s mom was suddenly sucked back into the beam’s path.

“Okay,” Hunk corrected quickly, “Uh, well… Shiro’s out. Still better than, you know, two ticks ago when they were both stuck. Look, he’s going to get Keith’s mom again. Everything’s going just according to - oh.”

Keith’s mother was swallowed by the Galra ship, which promptly disappeared. Pidge let out a yowl of inhuman anger.

“They - they tricked us, they - !”

Floating small and alone now, with the black of his flight suit bleeding into the black of infinity, Shiro looked lost, almost skeletal.

“To be fair,” Hunk argued half-heartedly, “we did trick them first.”

“Yeah, but we’re… Voltron, Earth, we’re the _good guys_ ,” countered Lance. “It’s okay for us to trick the bad guys, they’re _bad_ \- ”

“There’s no use arguing about it now,” Allura cut in. “The ship is gone and we can’t decide what to do until Shiro returns - he may have more information about what happened.”

“What _happened_ is they didn’t hold up their end of the deal! We have to track down that ship and pull Keith and his mom out by force!” Lance yelled.

“He does have a point,” Antok agreed.

“Okay… thank you Mr…. Galra…” said Lance warily. Antok ignored him and continued.

“Keith does not know the human is still prisoner aboard Lotor’s ship. If he escapes without her our efforts will have amounted to nothing.

“Not nothing,” said a voice from behind them. Shiro entered the bridge, back straight and face sullen. “We’ll still keep the Black Lion out of Lotor’s hands.”

“But he will still have the bitch,” Kolivan pointed out. “Who knows what secrets she may hold.”

“Good point,” Shiro conceded. He looked meaningfully at the Marmorites. “We don’t know - but it seems like you do, or at least you have some idea. So why don’t you tell us what an ordinary-looking woman from Earth might know about the Blade of Marmora.”

“And don’t call her a bitch!” added Pidge.

 

~

 

As quickly as the fire had started, it disappeared - burning trees faded into a grey and black Gladiator arena. Keith was too still, too slow, and his hazy confusion filtered through the bond. 

Above them in the terraced seats a pair of pale yellow eyes widened, then narrowed, in surprise.

Lorena grabbed Keith and towed him down the hallway as the Zzithlith started coming to their senses. He stumbled along behind her mercifully silent until they were several yards away from the room.

There she heard the swish of his hair as he turned his head, the stillness as he stared; then, one whispered word.

“M - mom?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lotor's citrus and nunville cocktail is called a Margaritaville.


	4. Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After dispelling Lotor's illusion, Keith and his mother make a bid for escape. Meanwhile Lance is anxious and insecure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains semi-graphic masturbation, in case some of you were looking forward to that kind of thing. If not, you may want to skim or skip the section with Lance trying to sleep.

******* 

_The Grey Ones with the long ears brought them long life. The Tall Gods with the glowing eyes taught them new ways. The Great Cat was greater than the saber-toothed demons that haunted their dreams, and the Strong People were stronger._

_Then the Sky-comers assimilated into their lives. They lived and died, they bred. They produced few viable young. Those who survived were shorter. Hairier. Weaker. Their painted faces faded to brown and all the things that distinguished the Sky-comers disappeared._

*******

 

Lotor watched the Zzithlith struggle through his conjuration with mild interest, sipping his margaritaville from a jeweled flask. The muggy, insect-ridden air of the illusion stopped a few feet before his nose. It should have been comfortable, even fun, but his mind kept chasing after the events of a few vargas prior.

The impossible victory of reclaiming the Black Lion. The ingenuity of his deceit.

The passive rejection of his father…

Lotor took another swig of liquor to wash away the sour taste of failure and betrayal fermenting at the back of his throat. That Terran bitch… she was down there somewhere, cowering in the thick foliage. Lotor pulled over a holoscreen showing a close-up image of the mud-caked Zzithlith. Disgusting. He scanned it around the illusion, looking for the tell-tale pink-and-blue glow of her desert sunrise quintessence but finding only dim red sunlight. Scowling, Lotor scanned back to his rollicking prisoners and their obnoxious display of joy. If he couldn't be happy, then why should anyone else?

He lit the illusion on fire.

Maybe it would flush out the bitch.

“Very nice, my Prince,” his sentries applauded mechanically. “A brilliant effect. They will make excellent additions to the sculpture garden in the port wing.”

Lotor drunk in the praise with another sip of his cocktail and settled back for a stress-busting evening of torture. The mass hysteria below was a balm to his wounded ego - every creature in the ring before him was at his mercy, under his control. He'd have to plan something special for the Earthling, whenever he found her amid the squat trees and thick vines. Subtle but terrible. No use spoiling his father's gift.

He began ticking through ideas and scenarios as he watched the scene unfold before him. The screaming, pleading, and grasping for life; the stilling, the quieting, the staring around in confusion at -

“My magic!” Lotor shot out of his seat, eyes frantically scanning the dusky room before him. It was vast and empty save for the panicking Zzithlith. They were slow to comprehend the transition from illusion to reality, but as soon as their bodies realized the pain and danger had gone, they were stampeding for exits, knocking over sensitive magical equipment in their desperate bid for escape.

"The bitch..." Lotor said to himself. It had to be her, and now that the cover was gone she would have no where to hide. Another quick look around the room - nothing. So Lotor yanked over his close-up screen and searched the hallways around the arena.

"There!" he bellowed, whipping around to face his sentries. They sat straight-backed and still in the seats he had assigned them for his game, watching passively and awaiting instruction. "Stop them! Useless automatons! And detain the human bitch!" he gestured vaguely at the confusion below and jabbed a thin lavender finger at the holoscreen following the human's path through his ship. In a clanking flurry of metal limbs the robots rose. Lotor let out a long suffering sigh and leaned back again to watch this new entertainment.

The Zzithlith were putting up a fight, but Lotor was far more confident in his sentries' battle prowess than he was their intelligence. The lizard-bugs would soon succumb. That hairless ape...

Lotor turned with piquing interest toward his screen and found her sprinting for the outer chambers of the ship. 

"So she's after the Lion?" he smirked. There was a sentry closing in behind her, a baton crackling with electricity raised over its head. Lotor hoped the bitch would give a good show before she was incapacitated. Worn and unarmed as she was, she had real skill in combat and more than a little passion.

Lotor caught the moment when she noticed her pursuer. Her eyes flicked back but her head didn't move, and just as the sentry came within range, she ducked and sidestepped, missing its blow and sweeping a leg out to knock the robot off its feet. The sentry stumbled over the limb but regained its balance with mechanical speed and precision. The human's organic body was slower coming out of her kick. The robot's sparking purple baton was nanoticks away from contact with her side when something flashed in the empty air between them.

Lotor leaned forward and squinted in confusion. The baton was crackling useless on the floor a few feet away. The sentry's head was bouncing off the wall, clanging to the floor and rolling to a stop at the human's feet. 

“What in the known the universe…!” Lotor replayed the encounter in his memory. When had the human even touched his guard's weapon? And what had severed its head?

The bitch took down the hallway again. Lotor's eyes flashed with anger, and he roared into a comm on his vambrace:

“Guards! Divert all unengaged units to the human bitch!”

 

~

 

_"Not long after Zarkon's power grab, our ancestors rebelled."_

Hunk wandered around the Castle mulling over the information Kolivan had shared.

_“Some of us were selected to hide and guard the Blue Lion on a remote and primitive rock - your Earth.”_

The words were like gum. The longer he chewed on them the less he got out, and he still couldn’t quite digest what he had heard.

_“There, over millennia, they interbred with your species, and forgot, and were all but forgotten. It was not long ago that the Blade learned of them again.”_

In stride with him walked Lance, mumbling occasional little thoughts.

_“As the Blue Lion stirred to wakefulness, our leaders made contact with theirs.”_

“Blue,” Lance muttered. So he was somewhere on Hunk’s wavelength. “He had a connection, Keith - that’s why - this is so unfair…”

_“We uncovered in them memories that slept like dormant blades.”_

Hadn’t Keith almost died awakening his blade? Red was bludgeoning the Blade headquarters pretty hard, at least...

"Hey so... if Doom and Altea were at war, why let Galra hide the Blue Lion - Lance, what do you think?"

"Right? First the Black Lion, now Blue?" Lance seemed to ponder the question. "Maybe... maybe I'll have to fight Kieth - like Shiro did with Zarkon. On - on the astral plane, or - whatever, I'll kick his purple ass."

"You really think Keith will, you know... turn purple?"

"Man, I don't fucking know." Lance mumbled.

They both went silent again, lost in their separate thoughts. Hunk started in on another wad of word-gum.

_"What can she tell Zarkon about the Blade of Marmora?”_

_“That much I cannot say. At the very least, she knows of our existence.”_

_“Can't say? Or won't? If you know anything you’re not sharing, now is the time to tell us.”_

_“Ask, and we will tell you anything you need to know.”_

Hunk sighed, mind still reeling with questions he now wished he would have voiced then. He grabbed at one off the top of his head.

"So.... if Zarkon thought Voltron was destroyed, why did the Blade need to guard the Blue Lion? And where were they when _we_ found her?"

“I dunno, prolly... busy sticking their... furry noses in everyone's... ugh! He _did_ have his eye on Blue from the beginning! That - that - Hunk, what if... what if _Keith_ was supposed to be Blue's pilot? What if - "

Lance trailed off and Hunk stared at him in surprise.

"Lance, is that what you've been thinking about this whole time? Keith - even Keith can't fly two Lions at the same time, so I wouldn't worry about that."

“I’m not worried!" Lance laced his hands behind his head and looked over in calculated indifference. "I’d just... like to see him try - to take her - is all.”

"Hmm.... Well, I am. I'm worried. About Keith."

"Heh, worried he'll go full Galra and kill us all in our sleep?"

"What? No. That's not funny, Lance," Hunk chided. Lance gave him a raised eyebrow. "Wha - fine, maybe a little. Worried, about that - but. Mostly I'm just..." Hunk sighed. "I hope he'll be okay, you know?"

Lance came to a stop, staring at the ceiling. Hunk halted and turned around to wait on him.

“Right, yeah…” he breathed. “His mom, and he… he didn't even recognize her...”

Hunk’s eyebrows bunched up in the middle as he watched a glassy pall settle over his friend’s eyes.

"Yeah, well, that too. Right now I hope he gets back...soon."

Lance blinked and shook his head.

“He’s such an idiot, you know he’ll do something stupid and - and Zarkon gets Black, a - and Keith, _and_ his freaky Galra mom…”

"Don't say that," Hunk accused. "You're so negative, about him. It's not like you. And I know you're still thinking about him taking Blue."

"I'm not - ! I'm... I don't think he's gonna take Blue," Lance said firmly.

"But...?"

"But, but like, what if he... was supposed to? Maybe... what if, maybe, I wasn't supposed to even... be here?"

"What? Lance! Okay, once again, none of us would be here if you didn't drag us down to - "

"Keith and Shiro would be here."

"No. No no no, dude, because youfound the Lion, you blew up that Galra ship, _you_  took us to Arus!"

"Keith found the Lion..."

"Those cave paintings didn't start glowing for Keith, man. Besides, if you think _you're_ not meant to be here then what about me, huh? I'm a worse pilot than you are. I can't hardly even roll over in bed without blowing chunks!"

"Hunk, we slept in the same room for like a year and I know for a fact that is bullshit."

"Okay, so I exaggerated, that's not the point. The point is, stop saying you don't belong here. All of us are supposed to be here or none of us are, and I really need to believe there's something like fate going on or, or, how else are we supposed to win?" Before Hunk even realized he was moving, he had scooped Lance into a gentle hug. “It’s gonna be okay, buddy," he whimpered. "We're... we _are_ gonna win...”

"Y - yeah. Of course, yeah, you're right Hunk." Lance faltered but hesitantly returned the hug. "You're right, we're - we're the Chosen Ones, we're the... we're Harry Potter in Space, we're fucken... Anakin Skywalker - "

"Whoa, whoa, bad example, dude."

"Sorry."

“It's okay…” Hunk sniffed. “I just. Uh. Hey, do you want me to make you some more tea?”

"I - I'm... I mean? Sure. I won't say no to that."

“Thanks, Lance.”

“Ha... for what?

“For letting me take care of you. It makes me feel like… home, with my sisters and dad. It’s what I’m used to.”

Lance smiled back at him.

“Makes me feel like home, too, dude.”

Hunk beamed, turning heel and making for the kitchen.

“How about some cookies while I’m at it? I think I found something edible to make them out of this time. Kind of a spicy chocolate and... fruity? Some kind of tangy fruit, at least that’s what it smelled like…”

 

~

 

Keith's mom dispatched the next sentry that came with a glowing baton, and the one after that that came with a sword. She warned Keith not to draw attention to himself unless absolutely necessary.

But then they started showing up with blasters, and he couldn't let her face that alone and unarmed. A flash of his dagger and hands were separated from wrists, heads from shoulders, guns sliced in two.

"Keith!" his mother hissed as he blocked a barrage of laserfire with his double layer of armor. "If that cloaking goes down - !" The shots left dents in his suit and Keith wouldn't risk that move again. Hopefully, he wouldn't get a chance. The Black Lion hovered into his line of vision, straight ahead through the still-open door to the tractor beam bay. Keith felt his tight-strung muscles loosen with the hope that they might actually escape without further trouble.

They were just at the doorway when a streak of black light arched over Keith's head and toward his mother. Keith leapt forward to knock her down and out of the way. As she flailed out to keep her balance, the blast struck her left arm just where her torso had been only a tick before. Other than a wince and a grimace, she made no outward sign of injury.

“I see you have been hiding something from me, Earth bitch!” sneered a maniacal voice, and of course it was Lotor. Keith whipped around in a flush of panic, grip tightening around the luxite blade. Had he given himself away? 

Another burst of magic shot from Lotor’s outstretched hands. Before Keith’s brain could even register the danger, he was swinging at it with his sword. The attack hit the broad curve of the blade, and deflected off at an angle, crashing into the ceiling above. Lotor growled in anger or excitement.

“What magic does a Human wield? Show me your strength!”

Behind him several sentries appeared but stood back, still and ominous as grave markers. Biting his lip and taking a gamble, Keith rushed the Prince.

“We will measure our power agaUGH - !”

The punch landed square on the curve of Lotor’s sharp lavender jaw and sent him reeling. Keith kept his feet light, ready to sidestep any counterattack. Lotor scrambled to keep his footing. His hand groped out to steady him against the wall, and with his other arm he sent forward a pulsing, preternatural claw of purple energy.

It passed by Keith to grab at his mother’s waist.

She twisted away, but the hand swung back around to trap her in the loop of purple light that still connected it to Lotor's outstretched arm. As she jumped to escape the tightening circle of energy, the hand found a grasp on her leg and squeezed tight. It lifted her high and, as she dangled upside down struggling to free her leg, reared back to fling her against the wall.

Before the arm could finish its throw, Keith rushed at Lotor again, this time with his knife at the ready, and sliced the arm of glowing energy as he passed. The magic dispelled at the touch of his blade. Keith swiped next at the Prince's slender neck - but something flared in Lotor's eyes as the dagger flashed toward him, and he brought up his arm in a last minute block.

He was looking right through Keith.

"What kind of conjuration..." 

Sparks reflected in Lotor's eyes like flames as luxite clanged against his vambrace and glanced off. Keith turned his momentum into a spin, coming back around to slash down at the Prince's exposed head. Lotor dodged, then struck out blindly with his own sword, laughing.

"You're good, witch - fast!"

Keith dodged the wild stab and stepped back, looking for another opening. Lotor was studying the air in front of him, looking for some warning flash of Keith's sword. Keith circled slowly around, planning to attack from the back while Lotor watched his front. He was almost there when the Prince's eyes snapped to him and he wheeled around, white hair whipping out like a cape, hands glowing blue-black with some charging magic.

Keith brought his blade in front of his face like a tiny shield - poised and trying to figure out if he had time to strike before the magic hit him or if he should be ready to block - when, suddenly, the magic fizzled out. Lotor's head had snapped back and he was yelping in pain. Behind him Keith's mother wound the ends of his long hair around her forearm like a coil of rope.

 _Guess that’s my opening_ , Keith smirked and went in for the kill.

A wave of putrid brown swelled up in front of him and knocked him flat on his ass. The Marmorite blade was skidding across the floor before he realized he’d let it go. Keith’s mother yanked Lotor’s hair as forcefully as she could, throwing him behind her as she made a mad dash for Keith… past Keith… and picked up the knife.

Lotor was staring straight at him, now, with a wicked and growing smile. Then his mother was standing in front of him like a shield, stance low and blade up and her breast. Keith looked down at himself and saw the invisible armor peeling away from him in rotting strips. Lotor was still staring and hadn’t made any move to attack. Keith’s mother held her position, blade at the ready.

“The Red Paladin…” Lotor’s mouth cracked wider, “and the womb that grew him. Reunited despite my designs. It must be fate...”

He took a step closer and Keith’s mother raised the blade a little higher in warning and defense.

“Stay away from him!”

Lotor ignored her.

“You are smaller than I had imagined - tell me, are you a breeder, too? Or are you just malformed?”

“Your skinny ass should talk,” Keith spat. A vein pulsed in Lotor’s forehead and his fingers brushed the faint white chevrons under his amber eyes.

"Fraud of a false witch and her mongrel spawn! Do you even know what honor was just accorded you?" The markings on his face glowed out with latent power. "Yes, the bitch who carried me stained my lineage with her harlot blood. She gave me my magic, too. But I am still my father's son, Galra Prince of the Known Universe, and I stooped to challenge you! Druid against Witch! _Terran magic_ ," he scoffed. "Ha! - there is no need for this match to continue. Guards!"

The matte grey mass of metal spectators was stirring to motion when a high-pitched, clicking scream filled the air. Suddenly an emerald blur streaked across the room and Lotor was bowled over by a waist-high flying salamander. 

“ - for hurting my daughters!” the Queen declared. A dripping sting appeared at the tip of her tail and slashed across Lotor’s face as she tackled him. “Black Paladin, grant us refuge in your ship!

“I - ” Keith began, finally struggling to his feet. His mother had already surged forward to block Lotor’s retaliation with the luxite blade. But the Prince had not yet made any move to attack.

“My face!” he was wailing. “My face! Sentries, guards!”

The Queen's daughters were now crowding into the room, all sign of their burns seeming to have faded. They didn't wait for permission but made straight for the Black Lion, buffeting against her shields.

"Uh - yes - of course!" Keith responded belatedly, and bid the Lion open up to her supplicants. 

“Keith!” his mother was calling. He looked over to see her and the alien Queen struggling to keep Lotor in check as his sentries joined in the fray. Keith was about to run over to help, but his mother held up a hand. “The Lion! Get to the Lion, we have to go!”

So tripping on the tatters of his cloaking armor, Keith followed the prisoners into Black's waiting mouth and took his seat. The prisoners huddled at the back of the cockpit, crying for their Queen. She and Keith's mother were surrounded by sentries, who were pulling them off a wailing Lotor. Keith brought Black to life and started picking off the robots one by one. It was quick work for the Lion, and left Keith grinning and eager to take on the Prince.

But his mother and the Queen were scrambling up the Lion’s maw and urging him to _go! go! go!_

Black echoed that sentiment, turning to the exit of her own will. The bay doors were closed, still, but that didn’t stop her from taking off.

“Wait!” warned Keith, but there was no need. The doors slid open for them and the Lion shot out into space, quickly putting as much distance as possible between her passengers and the Galra ship. Keith’s mother crawled up from the mouth entrance as they careened into the black. The Queen came slowly after, her wings motionless and grey.

Behind them, in the shrinking point of the hangar door, Keith could feel a stillness grow, like the charging of lightning in stormclouds. 

“What is - ?”

A nova of magic crashed out from the ship. Seized with panic, Keith pushed the Lion as far as he could, accelerating at the edge of a silent blast as it loomed planetary and vast behind them. It was gaining, and finally swallowed the Black Lion, burying them in a suffocating tomb of blue-black...

Then spat them out again as they crossed the boundary of the attack's radius. Heart pounding, Keith swung the Lion around to look back. The soft sounds of a dozen bodies squirming, panting, crying, told him that his passengers were alive.

But behind them Lotor's ship glinted grey and royal purple at the center of a swath of unbroken black. The stars were gone, and Keith couldn't tell if they had been obscured, or snuffed out.

 

~

 

The GalactiCorp Office was off IH 358, between the Army and Navy Recruiting Stations. There was some healthy competition between them, and with the Marine Corps Station just south of the Navy building, but Galaxy Garrison tended to skim the cream off the top of the recruiting pool. They dangled the promise valor from one hand and the benefits of a multi-billion dollar corporation from the other, with the intrigue and ever-deepening mystery of space sprinkled over both like fairy dust. An enticing mix. Their programs were as crowded as they were prestigious, so the majority of their candidates were diverted to traditional military careers anyway.

Lance had not been dissuaded. He loved the ocean but his heart soared above it in the stars.

And he had worked too hard to be written off and lost in the annals of military bureaucracy and corporate secrets.

 

“Good morning, ma’am. How may we help you?” said the well-dressed blonde behind her modern steel-and-glass welcome desk. 

“Yes - I’d like to learn more about GalactiCorp,” Rosa said. The tinted glass doors behind her whooshed shut, sealing out the heat.

“Oh! Well, this is actually a spaceflight officer recruitment station - I would be happy to answer any questions you have, but if you’re looking to learn more about the company, you'll find a wealth of information on our website - ”

“No, I - I’m looking for information about the Galaxy Garrison.”

“I see, I see, here for a son? Daughter?”

“Yes, I’m asking for my son.”

"Oh, how exciting! Galaxy Garrison is an unparalleled opportunity for young people across all fields of space exploration and communication. Here - this packet will tell your son everything he needs to get started - on the back you'll find a schedule for information sessions. Looks like the next one is... Wednesday evening at this office - here!" the receptionist circled the time with a red pen. "Did you have any burning questions or concerns I can help you with right now?"

Rosa had burning questions and burning tears. The tears she swallowed carefully before she spoke.

“Yes. I’m concerned about safety.”

“Very understandable,” the receptionist agreed brightly, pulling a second booklet from behind her desk. “This pamphlet is specifically for family, it addresses the most common safety concerns. Naturally, there’s some danger involved in spaceflight, but our Garrison Fighters face a much smaller risk than their military counterparts. Mainly that’s because we aren’t currently involved in any wars in space, haha!”

Rosa took the pamphlet and ignored the joke.

“How many students and pilots would you estimate go missing each year?”

“Um, I - not many? I would say almost none, GalactiCorp has an impeccable safety record.”

“What about… the disappearances?”

“Oh. Yes - the Kerberos crew? Well, I can’t lie to you and say anything we do is without risk. Then again, even getting in your car and driving here today - ”

“And the students? There were three students killed in an accident earlier this year?

“Ah, well, yes... tragic, to be sure. However, statistically - ”

"Yes, I understand statistics. I also understand informed risk-taking. I want to know what risks my - my son will face."

"Right, um," the receptionist said a little thinly, smile leaving her eyes if not her lips, "as our pamphlet discusses - "

"No. I want to know about the recent accidents. What happened to those students?"

"Pilot error," said the blonde tersely, "wasn't it?"

“Residents of the surrounding area report having seen strange lights, something falling from the sky around the time they are reported to have gone missing.”

“Well, I don’t know the details of the incident, but that sounds like a plane crash to me."

“Two also reported having seen a strange ship leaving the atmosphere early that morning - large and bright blue, nothing like the Garrison shuttles, they said.”

“Ma’am... this is a space exploration company not a tabloid newspaper," said the receptionist with a haughty sigh, "and the Galaxy Garrison campus is the private property of a military contracting firm. I would be advise you to consider before saying anything incriminating.”

“The sky is not your property, and neither are your students! So I would advise you to tell me what happened to my oldest son!”

The receptionist’s face steeled and her eyes narrowed.

“Colleen Holt?” she guessed, but at the blank look on Rosa’s face immediately seemed to regret her words. “Look,” she recovered immediately, face and voice hard. “I’m very sorry for your loss. But I’m going to have to ask you to vacate the premises, or be escorted off.”

“ _Sorry_ indeed - pendeja…” Rosa cursed under her breath as the doors slid shut behind her. “My son would have been a hero, a real fighter - not some liar or paper pusher like your _sorry_ ass.” Still, she had learned something of interest. “Colleen Holt…" she murmured, mind switching gears. "Now why does that name sound familiar…?”

 

~

 

There were a few seconds after the lights went off in Lance’s room, before his eyes adjusted to the dark, when he felt like he was floating alone in a starless sky. It was a lonely and agoraphobic feeling that kept his eyes open and straining to see the outline of the door, the walls, his shoes squared up next to the bed... 

When his eyes got used to it, the dim light would become a distraction, and he would pull his sleep mask down. Then, ideally, he would drift into eight hours of uninterrupted beauty sleep.

This was not an ideal night. Lance stumbled in and out of so many restless dreams he lost track of the line between what was real and what was in his head.

The ship’s alarms blared; he leapt out of bed and was met with silence. Keith was stumbling out of the Black Lion; Lance’s leg twitched to step toward him but the movement jarred him awake.

He was too wired. Impatient. Worried. Keith's not coming back was first in long list of terrible and sequential things Lance was trying not to think about: the Black Lion and the two prisoner's being delivered to Zarkon, losing the war, failing his planet and his predestined role, never seeing his family again...

The next time he startled awake, reacting physically to some dream-threat, Lance groaned and threw off his covers and robe and curled into a fetal position, in his boxers, with his knees tight against his chest. There was an emptiness in the pit of his stomach and he hugged his legs into it, trying to press the feeling away.

But soon his shoulders and back tensed with worry and he dropped onto his back, sideways with his legs parked high up the wall and his head dangling over the edge of the bed. His hands he threw up behind him till his rib cage strained against his skin and his fingertips grazed the floor.

If there was a monster under his bed, now would be the perfect opportunity for it to drag him away. But Lance wasn’t thinking about that.

The arch of his body loosened muscles along his abdomen and chest. He felt open, almost vulnerable, like the exposed underbelly of a prey animal. But the openness was freeing. Exhilarating, in a private way - like skinny dipping at night on a public beach.

Lance closed his eyes and summoned the salty breeze; the shivering starlight; the wet skin, chilled and silver as the surface of the moon.

It was a familiar, wistful feeling. Lance let it swallow him.

His arms snow-angeled back up to his sides so his fingertips could sketch shaky spirals on the soft canvas of skin stretched taught over his ribs. Goosebumps trailed behind the touch, nerves lit up like tongues of cold flame, and he was floating again. Not in space, this time, but swaddled by the waters of Corpus or Cuba.

His body was transported and aroused by rush of sensations. Brushing lower over their tender canvas, his fingers painted quivering sparks over his thighs and groin.

As much as it had been on his mind recently, Lance wasn't prepared for the sudden intrusion of Keith's stupid fucking face on his mindscape, right as he skimmed the pads of two fingers up his perineum to tease his balls. He yelped in surprise.

Lance didn’t usually think about other people when he masturbated. He didn't need to. He had - tested the waters, dipped his toes into that tepid fantasy. Mostly he just ended up pulling back in discomfort from his own thoughts. Not this time.

Instead, in the dizziness of fatigue and arousal, Lance tried naming his fixation - “ _Keith…_ ” - as he brought a halting hand back to his loins and…

Oh. Wow, that - that was weird. Was it too far or too fast? He stilled his hand and waited for his thoughts to clear, then started moving again.

A heavy breath, a soft gasp, his eyes fluttered shut and his cock twitched toward his belly. Lance let his mind wander.

He thought mildly, between panting breaths and languid strokes, of the cheese planet Hunk had mentioned a day or two before. He thought of visiting the planet with his team… with Keith… his insides glowed. Keith’s face intruded on his thoughts again... smiling at him… laughing at his jokes… sprouting a body and arms that wrapped around Lance, and Lance felt warm. Keith holding his face… kissing him with hot, wet lips… Lance traced the curve of his dick and thumbed over the tip as he imagined it, and it felt wrong again, dirty, but he didn't stop…….

Lance’s balls tightened as he came over the contracting muscles of his stomach with a small sigh. He let his hands fall to his sides and lay sprawled across his bed with his boxers down around his hips. After a few moments, he drifted into another round of uneasy sleep.

He would wake later, in the middle of the night, to clean the dried spunk off his front pull on his eye mask, before crawling back into bed and passing out for the remainder of the night.

 

*******

 _“Kepler has been turned_ _to the source of the alien broadcast, sir._ _We are hoping for a visual.”_

_“But is their any more information on the message?”_

_“It appears to be a distress call, Sir.”_

_“Yes. Obviously. Distress at what, Johnson? What bearing does it have on Earth?”_

_“_ _We believe_ _they are being… invaded, sir. By another alien force.”_

_“Good, Johnson.”_

_“Sir?”_

_“You have performed well. Summon an emergency meeting of the defense council. We need to_ _properly_ _assess this risk.”_

_“Yes, sir.”_

*******


	5. Don't Follow the Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith's mom tries to reconnect with her son. Team Voltron tries to reconnect with Keith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> s3 fucked me up good guys but it won't have any bearing on this fic

_*******_

_“Look, Mr. Jimenez, it’s a groundbreaking discovery - if you’re right - but a security concern? You know as well as I do these messages would have to be sent - thousands of years ago!”_

_“One would assume.”_

_“Assume? It’s_ science _, Jimenez, this is_ fact _. Radio messages can’t travel faster than the speed of light. Full stop.”_

_“Not according to our understanding of the universe, but imagine - a civilization advanced enough to colonize a galaxy? They must have developed technology for travelling through space at impossible speeds.”_

_“_ _Surprisingly apt word choice there, 'impossible_ _.' I prefer to think in terms of probability, myself, but even I’d round this one down to a zero.”_

_“Then assume instead, Doctor, that_ you _are right. Assume this invasion_ did _happen thousands of years in our past and the news has just reached us. What will reach us next? Earth has been give and unprecedented warning, a chance to prepare. We cannot afford to ignore this threat.”_

*******

 

The Castleship’s bridge was empty and expansive under its panoramic view of space. Allura stood alone on her pedestal at the room’s center, surrounded by holoscreens. Her hands hovered over the controls. Readouts, data, and images from scans flickered across her face, but she stared through them into the void and quietly regretted everything she'd done since the moment the two Galra rebels had set foot in her ship.

She still didn't trust them, but she had to admit there was truth and wisdom to the things they said. Furthermore, Keith…

 _Jealous if I’m being honest; but if I’m being fair…._ When she thought of Keith’s sudden and unexpected reunion with his mother, Allura’s heart ached like an overextended muscle that wouldn’t stop reaching back, grasping at all the things she would give for just one more encounter…

Guiltily, she dragged her mind back out of that familiar pattern of thought.

It was just over one quintant since the botched rescue attempt, and still no sign of Keith - or, more alarmingly, of the Black Lion’s quintessence. If the Castle still hadn’t detected that, it most likely meant the Lion remained on Lotor’s ship, where its signal would be blocked.

Allura's eyes refocused on the screens in front of her and she flicked compulsively through all the ship’s scans, looking for some new blip of hope. Nothing. But one more round might yield -

“Anything?” - the voice startled Allura out of her increasingly desperate cycle of checking and rechecking the same data. She twirled around to face the silhouette in the doorway.

“Ehm - no, Shiro, not yet. We have to give him time.”

“I know, but I can tell you're anxious - and to be honest, so am I.” He looked at her with tired eyes and, somehow, Allura felt guilty about that, too.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You don’t have to be sorry." He stepped onto the bridge, drifted a few paces closer. "Nothing that’s happened is your fault.”

“I… I still regret my actions.”

“Everyone does things they regret, Princess. You suffered a great deal at the hands of the Galra. Keith will forgive you.”

“So did you.”

“Princess…?”

“You also suffered at the Galra's hands, and you were never as mistrustful as I was.”

Shiro seemed to turn inward, and didn’t respond, so Allura went back to staring out the window with unfocused eyes. Then something caught her attention. A ripple, like a fish under dark water…. 

“We reacted differently," Shiro said finally, "but neither of us acted unreasonably. I mean that, Allura. You… the way you reacted may have been unfair, but it was understandable and the damage is not irreversible.”

Allura batted holoscreens out of the way with a sweep of her arm and squinted into the vacuum around her ship.

“Allura? Is something wrong?”

Without answering she dragged a single small screen into view and scanned for heat in the space before them.

“Ships,” she said finally. There was a long line of them crossing directly in front of the Castle. “They’re using some sort of primitive cloaking technology.”

Pointing, Allura showed Shiro where the shiny black hull of one ship distorted the field of stars. His face shifted from concern to general alarm and he closed the distance to the pedestal, standing next to her and straining to trace the outline of each ship with attentive eyes.

“What do we do?” he whispered finally. Instinctively, Allura matched his tone.

“I don’t know - they don’t appear to be interested in us, so let’s wait to see what they do first. I’ll call everyone to the bridge, to prepare in case of an attack. They don’t _look_ Galra, but of course I can't be sure.”

Shiro nodded. “We should see if Antok or Kolivan know anything about it.”

“Even if they do, I doubt they’d share it."

 

The remaining three Paladins rushed to the bridge minutes later.

“What is it now?” cried Hunk.

“Is it Keith?” huffed Lance, right on his heels.

“We don’t think so,” Allura answered, “but we’re not sure yet. There are cloaked ships flying through our space and we’re unsure of their origin and purpose.”

“Have we tried contacting them?” asked Pidge.

“We don’t want them to know we’ve spotted them, or make any moves unless they go first,” Coran replied.

“Sound strategy,” Pidge conceded. “Only I’m not so sure they’re trying to hide.”

Shiro frowned. “Why’s that, Pidge?”

“The child is right,” Kolivan said. “Look.”

Allura turned to the window and gasped in surprise. Flanked front and back by the parade of obsidian ships was a larger vessel, yellow-white haloed and painfully radiant in the dark.

“What is it?” Shiro asked, watching as the twinkling inferno of a ship crawled across the sky. “Princess? Kolivan?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Allura marveled.

“It’s a ship,” said Kolivan, “but it looks like a dying star.”

Lance shivered visibly.

“Well that’s not ominous!”

“We’ve been hailed!” announced Coran. Allura squared her shoulders.

“Put it on the screen.”

 

~

 

One by one Keith stopped the Lion’s nonessential functions: weapons, navigation, flight… until only communication and life support remained. 

“We need to make contact with your team,” his mother said again, nagging and unhelpful. Black’s power was draining slowly and the emptiness around them pressed forebodingly against her hull.

“I already know that.”

The sudden hand on his shoulder was an unpleasant jolt.

“Reach out to your Lion,” his mother was saying.

“Don’t touch me,” Keith replied.

Crowded into a corner of the cockpit lay the Queen, wrapped in a protective coat of her daughters’ resting bodies. It was cold. Keith almost missed the lukewarm presence of his mother’s hand as it retreated back to her lap. Black ran colder than Red in the best circumstances. Now, floating half-dead in the light of a million distant stars, she was just warm enough to keep them alive. Keith shivered under his armor.

An awkward silenced congealed in the thin air. It pressed against Keith’s abdomen like the emptiness around them. He felt small, cramped; his head swirled with questions and his heart shrank under the fear of answers.

“Try connecting with the Black Lion. Reach out with her quintessence.”

Keith started and realized he had been drifting out of consciousness.

“Fine,” he sighed and closed his eyes, groping around for the Lion’s senses. The fabric of her Energy stretched weak and thin in his mind, but Keith found her eyes and leaned forward to look through them.

Pinpoints of cold light dotted the darkness behind Keith’s closed eyes as he took over the Black Lion’s vision. It stretched into a 360-degree starscape. Squinting, Keith peered out to he limits of his newfound sight, but all he could see was…

Behind them, still distant but drawing visibly closer, were a few circling figures. They looked like small ships with glowing blue eyes and segmented bodies.

Keith’s eyes shot open.

“There’s someone out there, around us! We should hail - ”

“So you saw them.”

“What?”

“Those Weblings have been circling us for light-seconds. They’re following our trail - like sharklets scenting blood.”

Keith swallowed hard.

“This is why we _have to_ reconnect with - ” That same useless line. Something in Keith snapped.

“You have something to say to me about _reconnecting_?”

Silence.

Keith’s knuckles whitened around the controls.

“Why did you leave me,” he finally said. His voice was softer than he'd intended, barely audible over the ringing silence. For a long time there was no reply. 

“I didn’t mean to...” The small voice was stark against the emotions warring through Keith's body, and its sentiment shallow. He scoffed.

“ _Try again._ ”

A sigh.

“I... was detained.”

“For seventeen years?”

“It’s a long story.”

“So tell me before we suffocate.”

Keith’s voice stayed sharp, but the knife’s edge of his anger was dulled with curiosity and his heart pounded. The answers he had been fighting for were a breath away...

A breath passed…

“I had questions, too.” Keith’s mother was staring deliberately away from him, out the Lion’s eye into the fate closing in around them. “It was just after you were born, Keith… the messages started coming.”

She looked at him now, eyes deep with love and regret. Keith could see his own reflection in her pooling tears. “I didn’t wanted you to get caught up... oh, Keith. What do you know already?”

“Nothing. I’m Galra? I’m… I can feel the Blue Lion.”

“Yes... our ancestors hid her on Earth. When Earth started receiving signals from other planets… she woke up. And we could feel them, the signals. You know how it is.”

Keith nodded.

“Eventually, we woke up, too. So to speak. The Blade found us, we learned… so much, Keith. Earth was an oasis of peace at the edge of warzone.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I was young, Keith, I was… like you, I wanted to do something about it. But I didn’t… I never wanted this for you, my…” his mother hesitated and Keith was stung with the impression that she, too, was considering what to share with him and what to keep hidden. “And then… and when people started disappearing - my - _our people_ \- I was scared for you. So I left you. With your dad, and I, I just walked away.”

Keith made no answer.

“I know it’s a stale excuse but Keith, I did this for you. I thought it would keep you safe. I meant to come back, Keith. I always meant to return. I… like I said, I was detained.”

“They - ” Keith considered withholding information out of spite, but he had no evidence his mother had been anything but honest and open - and there were things he’d been wanting to say to someone.

“Dad told me I was adopted,” he continued. “From Korea. I never really believed it. I thought it was part of my cover story,” Keith chuckled drily. “He was sure paranoid…”

He glanced over shyly to see his mother fixing him with a strange look.

“Keith, your father _was_ Korean.”

“Oh…” Keith looked away again, feeling silly for speaking up. His mother was still looking at him oddly, he could see her out of the corner of his eye. He tried to ignore it.

The expanse of this new information was staggering and he felt dizzy trying to fit it into the single coherent picture that had been his life. Like staring at something too large to take in all at once. Yet he still wasn’t satisfied. It didn’t explain everything - it didn’t explain enough.

“So… why do I still feel it? The Blue Energy?”

“You can feel her now?”

“What? No, that’s not what I - ”

“Reach out! She’ll be looking for you, too.”

“I don’t feel her _now_.”

“I thought you said - ”

“Just. Never mind,” Keith sighed. “I’ll reach out again.”

 

~

 

In early August, Cameron and Bri returned to school. Lance’s birthday had passed, the first since his disappearance, and that anniversary still hung over his family like a second wake. 

The house was empty and heavy around Rosa. After spending several weeks mostly in bed, Lisa was back to supervising her souvenir shop, putting in longer and longer hours as the tension between her and her wife grew. Rosa doubted she would make it home for dinner.

It had started with Rosa’s theories. Lisa shut down every time Rosa talked about their son as if he was still alive. When she’d brought up her visit to the recruitment office, Lisa had let a dirty plate drop from her hands to crash on the kitchen floor.

“The longer I talked, the less she would say, mi vida,” Rosa had continued animatedly, stooping down to help her wife pick up the larger pieces of shattered ceramic. “And then - Lisa, and then, she asked me if I was Colleen Holt…!”

Lisa had padded over to the pantry to grab a broom without word or reaction. Rosa went on, undeterred.

“Colleen Holt, the astronaut’s wife! The one who disappeared from Pluto?”

“Oh my god, Rosa, I can’t believe…”

“Yes! So I think she is looking, too. For the truth under their river of bullshit - ”

“Rosa, dear god, I can’t believe you, Rosa, Christ,” Lisa groaned, stamping on the pedal to open their trashcan. “You are one to talk about bullshit, you know that? I swear to god, if you try to shove your delusional fantasies down the throat of some mourning, suffering _stranger_ \- !”

Choking on her threat, Lisa had thrown her broom to the floor and stomped off to their bedroom. Rosa had been sleeping on the couch ever since. She was angry, but she couldn’t bring herself to blame Lisa. Instead she heaped her resentments on the Garrison and made a decision.

Lisa was barely at the house, so she left their two young children with Emilia - she would only be gone a day or two. Just in case, she left her wife a note on the fridge and a few neatly prepared meals inside of it.

She had Colleen Holt’s number, and she found her address. She had a change of clothes and a file of notes on her laptop.

She had a short four hour drive ahead of her, a long four hours alone with her thoughts.

Even as she sped north along I-37, one small, frightened corner of her mind still urged her to turn back. As long as she didn’t know what had happened, there would always be a chance he was alive.

But every minute she was a mile and a half closer to the last place her son was seen alive, and to the answers she _knew_ she would find.

 

 

~

 

“Attention, civilians!” a broad alien face had appeared on the Castleship’s viewscreen. It was approximately crescent-shaped and armored in lustrous slabs like thick scales. A patch of photosensitive skin stared crossly out at them through a small hole in the center of the shell. “You are trespassing on the most sacred route of the Interplanetary Etheregent’s funerary procession!”

Coran squinted at the pearlescent face. It looked familiar - not as an individual, but as a species...

“Whoa…” Hunk whistled. “Okay, that sounds bad.”

“It is! That’s a Delta Class Traffic Violation. The penalty is death. License and registration!”

Coran perked up, chasing a name on the tip of his tongue. The rest of the bridge seemed less than enthused.

“Yeah, no, that’s pretty bad…” “Hey wait! Do you even know who we are??” “Why do you need a license and registration if you’re just going to kill us?”

“You’re a Ghwig!” Coran exclaimed in triumph over the din. In an aside to his crew, he added, “The Ghweeg were infamous across the galaxy for their strict enforcement of space-traffic law. You never wanted to be caught speeding in Ghweeg space.”

“They have speed limits in space?” said Lance incredulously.

“The Ghweeg did,” answered Coran. “It used to be half lightspeed - always such a drag traveling their spaceways, if you couldn’t wormhole around.”

“Are you the pilot?”  the Ghwig roared indignantly. “Failing to comply in a timely manner is a Gamma Class Warning! Present your license and registration or I’ll slap you with a Beta Class Minor Infraction, which will go on your permanent record.”

“Seems inconsequential, considering we’ve already been sentenced to death,” Pidge muttered.

The Ghwig shook with anger.

“Your transgressions will follow you in death and beyond!”

“Alright, alright, young one... don’t have myocardial infarction! I’ve got it… here… somewhere…”

Coran flipped through views on his holoscreen at a mile a minute - fast enough he hoped no one would get a good look at any compromising photos that may or may not have been stored in the Castle’s cloud.

“Here we are,” said Coran, backpedalling to the correct screen. “Scan that!”

After a pause the Ghweeg whistled. “My, my, you lot are in a shipload of trouble now! This registration expired almost 10,000 years ago!”

“Ah. Yes, there’s. About that,” Coran began, but Allura stopped him.

“Honorable traffic… officer,” she fumbled, managing to keep her voice regal and diplomatic. “I am Princess Allura of Altea. My colleague and I have been in cryostasis for the past 10 millennia and were unable to renew our registration. We were just on our way to do so now when we came across your procession. I apologize for the brazen disrespect of my First Mate,” - Coran sputtered indignantly - “but I assure you this was an honest mistake. Perhaps you could… let us go with a warning? Just this once?”

The Ghwig seemed to consider her words. “I’m afraid I can’t let you go without a fine,” it said finally, “but if you turn this ship around and don’t return to Ghweeg space until your registration is up to date, I suppose I can drop the death sentence.”

“Extortion!” cried Coran, and Allura quickly shushed him.

“ _Thank you_ for your kindness, officer. What do we owe?”

The Ghweeg rubbed its chin.

“Ten million GAC - one million for each millennium your registration was left expired.”

“Eh - perhaps you would accept a less… conventional form of payment?” Allura bartered. “I’m sure we have something worth… how much is ten million GAC, Coran?”

“Well, factoring in inflation, I would guess it’s about… the value of approximately eleven and six tenths rhodium doubloons.”

The Ghwig blinked in surprise.

“You have rhodium?” it asked greedily.

“Why, young one! The RAT - that’s Royal Altean Treasury - boasts the greatest collec _mmhmmmhm_ \- ”

“A little,” Allura lied

 

“Saved - once again - by a bit of quick bartering!” declared Coran as the ship swung around to find its way out of Ghweeg space - wormholing was also forbidden and no one was up for another encounter with Ghweeg law enforcement. “This isn’t my first Yelmor rodeo! They didn’t call me the Great Coranegotiator for nothing! In fact - ”

“Coran,” Shiro spoke up, “wait. We may have a problem.”

“Other than the imminent threat of arrest?”

“Listen… I can feel the Black Lion.”

“Shiro that’s excellent!” Allura brightened instantly.

“Yeah, why would you call that a problem?” added Hunk.

Shiro looked back in the direction of the funeral procession slowly shrinking behind them.

“Because I’m afraid we’re going to have to violate the terms of our deal.”

 

~

 

A soft hum filtered through the dark - it sounded like water in the desert, and Lorena opened her cracked lips and heavy eyelids. She inhaled deeply, startling at the thinness of the air around her, and breathed out,

“Keith…”

Her son stirred.

“Mom?”

“Do you feel it, Keith?”

“Feel what?”

“The Blue Lion."

Keith sat up. His eyes went wide, searching but dimmed by fatigue.

“I can feel Red,” he replied after a pause.

“Red?” Lorena repeated in confusion. She shook her head. “Can you tell where she is? Can you roar back?”

“Black isn’t listening. I think she’s tired…”

His eyes fluttered shut in concentration but didn’t open. Had he fallen back asleep?

“Keith?”

His face was dark. Light flitted over him like streetlamps chasing them home from the hospital almost two decades ago, but instead of dirty yellow the light...

Light…

Lorena looked out the Lion’s front viewing screen and her breath hitched in wonder.

“Keith…” she breathed, shaking him lightly.

A glow of celestial white was blooming like moonflower in the black soil of space - a blindness growing across the field of her vision.

“It’s the light,” croaked Keith. His breath was too heavy, heartbeat too loud. “We have to get away - we’ll die if - ”

“You know what it is?”

Keith was grasping for the controls, gasping for more and more air as he shook with exertion and alarm.

“It’s the light! Don’t follow the light!”

Dark specks passed in front of the glowing spot like little black holes and Lorena could hear her own laugh cutting through the tense, oxygen-starved cockpit.

“You think… this is funny?” Keith breathed shallowly.

“I think you’re delirious, and I’m concerned about you, but… it is a little funny. It’s a ship, Keith.” She could just make it out as she squinted through the light. “We should flag it down.”

“A ship. Of - of course.”

Keith searched for the Black Lion’s comm, but Lorena stilled him with her hand.

“Wait.”

“You said - ”

“I know, but - look…”

The vessel was close enough now to see clearly even through its preternatural glow. There was a confusion of black shapes around its edges, like small segmented ships, choking the light in thickening throngs.

“It’s those… that were following us, what, what are…”

“They’re eating it.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Mature Weblums eat dead planets, the quintessence... Weblings, the juveniles, they must… start smaller.”

“We are going to die…” he sounded more resigned now than afraid. Then he stiffened and his jaw set. “We have to help, do something!”

A small band of Weblings peeled away from the dying light of the other ship to draw shrinking circles around the Black Lion. Their eyes glinted blue.

“What do we do?”

Lorena opened her mouth to offer empty words of consolation, but was interrupted by the crackling of their comm.

“Keith? Keith!”

He jumped at the sound of his name and at the flash of blue and white that broke through the wall of Weblings and zipped in front of the Lion.

“Shiro!”

“We have visual on the Black Lion - Keith! Can you get to the ship and dock? We're not going to be able to slow down.”

A short trail of shining ships as dark as space appeared hot on the Castle’s tail. Keith laughed in relief.

“Let’s find out!”

When the ship wheeled around in a close pass he dove straight for it, aiming for the prow.

“Keith!” Lorena cried in alarm. As the Castle sped forward in front of them, their point of impact moved back across the ship. Keith was just about to dash them against the ship’s rear hull when the doors of Black’s hangar moved into their path. The Lion careened into the opening, glancing off the side of the entrance, and skidded to a screeching halt on its side on the wide floor.

Her maw dropped open and Lorena gulped in the fresh, oxygenated air that rushed to fill the ship’s cavity.

 

~

 

Antok sat and breathed in the silence of Kolivan’s quarters, watching his leader with practiced dispassion. 

“The Red Paladin will be docking now, with or without the bitch - the _woman_. We should go.”

“He would have returned sooner, had he left without her. She will be with him, or else dead,” replied Kolivan.

“Then why do we linger?”

“Antok… everything she might have told Zarkon, she could also have told him.”

“This is true. Now that this heir has resurfaced as a contender, we cannot count on even a successful head-on attack to end Zarkon’s rule,” Antok agreed. It was an argument they had been having for a pair of quintants.

Kolivan had grown overbold in his plans. Outwardly, Antok blamed the Black Paladin’s prodding influence. Ulaz had taken a foolish risk in freeing him and that folly might yet beget ruin if Kolivan bent to Shiro’s impatience.

Kolivan shook his head.

“Taking down Zarkon would be a symbolic win, Antok. There are many steps to a total victory, no matter which path we take, and many planets yet to purge of his cruel influence. You know even better than I do the enormity of that task." He looked meaningfully at his second in command. "It wasn't Zarkon and his brat I was referring to just now. _Her_ son...”

“Take each step only as it appears before you,” cautioned Antok stubbornly, but a seed of doubt was sown in his own mind. This ship was already a dangerous place for their secrets. The Altean bitch was always suspicious and the Black Paladin was always wary. Then there was the Red Paladin, who felt entitled to every piece of sensitive information they had. Most troubling, and most endearing, was the small Pidge with her barrage seemingly innocent questions. She was as wily as she was tiny and as sharp and Antok’s luxite blade.

And now another player, a wild card, the Terran Marmor woman with the capacity unwittingly to reveal everything they had worked so hard to hide.

“So we must speak with her,” Antok urged, rising, “before the damage is done. Come, Kolivan. There is time.”

 

******* 

_“Alright, Jimenez, what’s so important you had to see me in person?_

_“Can’t I treat a friend to lunch without being accused of currying favor?”_

_“You’re not my friend, you’re my contractor - one of my_ many _contractors.”_

_“Your best contractor.”_

_“Alright, alright. Just tell me what you want. You want control over that Pluto mission? Don’t look surprised, I know you’ve been nagging NASA about some project, and they sure as hell can’t keep it on budget.”_

_“As tempting as that sounds Mr. President, I’m not here to ask you for a favor today. I’m here to do you one.”_

_“Ha! Last thing I need is to be deeper in your debt, Jimenez. What charitable offer is on the table this time?”_

_“Military contracts. Ballistics, defense - no, think about it - !”_

_“Good Lord, Nic, if you are about to tell me we’re facing an alien war? Jesus, at least let me order a drink first._

_“Haha, not yet, sir, but if you really think fighting extraterrestrials is the only military application of our advanced aerospace engineering and astronautics program, you’re more than welcome to leave the conversation at that.”_

_“Fine. Fine, I’ll bite. What do you have in mind?”_

_******_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more klance in the next chapter I promise but to be fair the tags do say slow build so


	6. Diagnosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Lotor's prisoners are welcomed onto the Castle of Lions and treated for magical injuries. Lance tries to act natural.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh..... this chapter marks the end of the rough draft I wrote before I began publishing this story. So updates may come less frequently now as it takes me more time to figure out how to get the story where I want it to go. I'm also starting school. So. Apologies for the wait for this and future chapters!

*******

_“Multinational space exploration company GalactiCorp has attracted broad criticism for contracting with fourteen different nations for private military consultation, training, and equipment manufacture._

_“CEO Nic Jimenez defended the company’s actions in a statement earlier this morning:_

_“‘We are witnessing the revival of the Space Age. Humans, not robots, will be pushing the boundaries of this final frontier for the first time since the moon landing over half a century ago - and we do not know what we will find._

_“‘In the unlikely event that we encounter sentient and hostile lifeforms, the Earth must be prepared to put forward a united front.’_

_"It is still unclear whether the Texas-based corporation will face a charge of treason against the US Government."_

*******

 

As Allura wormholed away from the Ghweeg vessels’ pursuit, Lance and his teammates ran to the Black Lion’s hangar.

Keith was stumbling out of the cockpit when they arrived, leaning against that woman, Lotor’s prisoner, and breathing deeply. His face was bluish, paler than normal.

“Whooooa, oh wow!” Hunk blurted out. “You guys don’t look so - Keith _is_ turning purple!”

“My armor!” yelped Pidge. It was falling away from Keith’s Red uniform in melted strips

“What - what happened? Are you okay?” cried Lance.

“Fine, until you opened your mouth.”

The quip was without malice, and Lance sighed in relief.

“I - I wasn’t talking to _you_ , Keith,” he shot back reflexively, and the woman - Keith’s _mom_ \- turned to blink at him in surprise. Lance flushed.

“Thank you for your concern,” she said awkwardly, “for me and my son,” - Keith side-eyed her grumpily - “but the Queen and her daughters - the other prisoners - they may need care more urgently than we do.”

“Others?” said Allura. She had just joined them at the hangar but was standing sheepishly in the doorway, looking anywhere but Keith.

“Queen?” Lance jumped in with piqued interest. “Daughters? Like, Princesses?”

He rehearsed a smile. Maybe more royalty would take his mind off Keith… who was standing right in front of him, scowling like an angry kitten. ( _Shit._ ) Lance shook his head to clear it and turned up his flirtatious charm.

A beautiful Queen and her beautiful daughters - Lance would court them with a look, kiss their hands and woo them with a flourish of well-deserved praise… while Keith looked on… grumpy and jealous and puffing out his pink lower lip in a little pout and… ( _Fuck!_ )

Lance could feel his face heating up as he tried not to think about the dream-woven haze of the previous night. The sensory memory of it tingled through his nerves. His hair rose like the shoots of fire ephemerals blooming red across his skin. That fantasy was too tangible in the artificial daylight. It echoed through hollow words of tuned out conversation that were hanging on the shimmering air around Keith’s face…

“They sustained psychosomatic burns while trapped in an illusion of Lotor’s creation,” Keith’s mom was explaining. “The symptoms disappeared after the initial magic dispelled, but we narrowly escaped the effect area of another hex as we fled the ship. The Lion lost energy as a result and we were left without fully functional life support systems.”

“You were hit by magic?” Allura repeated urgently. “Where are the other prisoners? Are they able to move?”

Lance hid behind his charming smile as a figure appeared at the back of the Black Lion’s throat.

“I am Queen Wooth of the Zingwa Zzithlith,” the figure announced in a soft humming voice as She floated into view. Her wings split the light into dazzling and colorful patterns that haloed the air around Her.

Lance had to hide a wince at the sight of her face.

“Oh, boy,” said Hunk, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. Pidge on the other hand was buzzing with excitement.

“Fascinating!” she exclaimed. “She appears to be some species of amphibious insectoid!”

Lance swallowed his distaste and dipped into a low bow.

“Your Majesty, Queen Ruth,” he greeted, holding out his hand for the Queen’s.

“ _Wooth_ ,” She corrected, examining the proffered limb.

She didn’t seem to understand the gesture and prodded it with one antenna instead of giving him Her foreleg to kiss.

Then a long sticky tongue slapped against his palm. Lance twitched in horror, but his smile barely faltered. He risked a glance at Keith, who was watching him with a raised eyebrow, unimpressed.

“Jealous?” Lance goaded, voice cracking only a little.

“Unbelievable. She’s all yours.”

“Ooh, I bet if you play your cards right she’ll stick that tongue some - ”

“ _Pidge!_ ” Lance and Shiro cried in horrified unison. Allura stepped in, pushing Lance aside. She bowed, too.

“Hello, Queen Wooth. I am Allura, Princess of Altea. In the name of the Voltron Alliance I welcome you aboard this ship and offer you our hospitality.”

“Thank you, Princess,” said Wooth, returning the bow. “Of Voltron we gathered only rumors, but its Paladins live up to their legend.” She looked gratefully to Keith. “At least, their Queen does.”

Keith looked away.

“I told you, I’m _not_ \- ”

“If your daughters and drones possess even a honeydrop of the courage and magnanimity you showed, Queen Keith, we are in good care.”

Lance sniggered. “Maybe you should lead the way to the healing pods, _Your Majesty_ ,” he said smoothly. Allura responded immediately as if the suggestion had been aimed at her.

“Yes… I’d like to have them scanned first, as we don’t know what kind of injuries they have. Please, follow me.”

 

“So, what are you, anyway?” Wooth asked, hovering uncomfortably close to Lance on their hike to the cryopods. “Worker? Drone? Surely not another Queen.”

“What?” said Lance, flinching away. “Am I… um, D? None of the above?”

“No, no: what is your _sex_?” clarified the Queen.

“I - uh, boy?”

“But do you inseminate or bear? Or neither?”

“EXCUSE M - ”

“He inseminates,” Pidge cut in.

“PIDGE - !” Lance was red up to the tips of his ears. "And how would you know that anyway!"

Pidge shrugged.

“I see. You know…” the Queen buzzed, dropping closer to him, “it has been so long since I have seen a drone…”

“I - I’m not - ”

“Turnabout’s fair play, Lance,” Pidge shrugged again. Even Hunk just gave him an apologetic look. Lance glared at them both. Pidge had pulled up a holoscreen from the wrist computer she had taken to wearing and was typing something quickly with one hand. Lance gaped at her.

“Are - are you taking _notes_?”

“Of course,” she said matter of factly. “Don’t touch!”

Lance was already turning the screen to face him when she slapped his hand away.

“‘Zzithlith reproduction and hierarchical structure appears close analogue to honeybees’,” Lance read. “When did you get so interested in reproduction? First Galra - ”

“Not just reproduction,” frowned Pidge. “Xenoanthropology. Comparative. Gives me a frame of reference for understanding alien behaviors - what! It’s more useful than just flirting with everything!”

 

Coran was waiting by the healing pods when the group arrived. Lance and the rest of the team hung back as he scanned the patients, then poured over screens of readouts.

“Curious!” he diagnosed. “Well, I supposed that’s not actually surprising.”

“What? What is it? Are they gonna make it?” babbled Hunk. Lance’s stomach did a backflip.

“I suspect so, but I can’t provide any more detail than that. This is Allura’s area - most likely some ill effect of Lotor’s magic, but the computers can’t quite make sense of it!”

Allura took a hesitant step forward.

“Despite what Coran’s said,” she hedged, “medical magic is not exactly my field. But I’ll take a look.”

Holding up her hand she summoned a separate holographic control panel. Icons describing the bodies of her patients appeared on its screen, wreathed in auras of colored flame. Lance watched, transfixed, as Allura examined them. With her fingers she rotated each figure, zooming in and out, looking for damage.

The first dozen holofigures were small, the Zzithlith, and their flames flickered weakly in muted earthtones. Keith’s mother towered next to them, her aura the sandy pink and blue of earth and sky or land and water. The last figure was the brightest - a red-orange flame deepening to blue, purple, white in the heat at its heart.

 _That_ , Lance thought, _is Keith._ The panel under his icon seemed to be smoking, as if his holographic flames were burning it. Tendrils of thin wispy light floated up and danced in the air above, mixing with other colors and fading to nothing. Lance leaned closer. The other colors were swirling up from the other holofigures, whom Lance now noticed were peppered with dark spots like shrapnel. And the smoke wasn’t coming from the consul. It was coming from these holes.

“This is - ” Allura murmured.

“What?” Coran prompted. “What is it, Princess?”

“They... are _leaking_ quintessence.”

“What does that mean?” demanded Keith.

“Your life force is being drained,” explained Allura. “The only way to fix it is to plug the leak.”

“Can the pods do that?”

“No. I can: I can fix the leak, but I cannot restore the lost quintessence. We may have to find an outside source.” Allura put her chin in her hand and studied her patients for a moment. “I’m not familiar with Human and Zzithlith lifecycles - at what age do your species stop quintessence regeneration?”

 

~

 

It would be easily accessible - close, in a state park near the Garrison campus. Colleen had been there before. Fascinating as it was, there had been nothing extraordinary or earth-shattering in the cave art. 

Now it was the strongest lead she had.

 _But why?_ she kept thinking, helplessly, as she scrolled through an old journal article about the site. _Why me, why_ my _family?_

Colleen was a scientist, but her discipline intersected heavily with the humanities. She studied people, their stories as well as their histories. Her rational mind knew, of course, it was just human instinct to find patterns in coincidence.

Her poetic mind still couldn’t help but wonder - was her family, was she _chosen_? Was there rhyme or reason to random -

The reverie was punctured by the sharp _ding_ of her doorbell, followed by a barrage of rapid-fire knocks. Quietly, Colleen stood and padded to her front door to peek through the keyhole. Dark blue eyes stared back, shaking and belying the determined look on the face of a short woman in sandals and cream shorts with a loose white blouse.

She didn’t look Garrison. Colleen checked the latch on the door before unlocking the knob and deadbolt to open it a fraction.

“Can I help you?”

The woman’s eyes lit up.

“Hello! Are you Colleen Holt? I am looking for Mrs. Colleen Holt.

“May - may I know who’s asking?”

“Oh! Yes, of course…” The woman fiddled with the sunglasses resting on top of her pulled-back hair. “My name is Rosa Sanchez. My son was enrolled at Galaxy Garrison?”

Colleen froze and stared back so intensely that the woman fidgeted under her gaze and repeated her question.

“Are you Colleen Holt?”

“Y - yes,” she replied finally, unconsciously reaching up to unlatch her door. Rosa stepped back as it swung open, leaving Colleen standing on the the threshold with cool air behind her and stifling heat in front. She didn’t move to invite Rosa in and Rosa didn’t move to enter. Instead she reached into a brown leather purse and started rummaging around.

“The... same Colleen Holt whose son and husband went missing? From the Kerberos mission?”

Colleen nodded wordlessly.

“Mrs. Holt, my son Lance was…” Rosa hesitated as she pulled out a small creased photograph. She stared at it for a moment, then held it out for Colleen to take. “...my son went missing from the Garrison almost two months ago. ‘Presumed dead.’” She winced, looking up at Colleen with watery eyes. The boy in her photograph was in cadet uniform and smiling broadly. “I - I’m here on a hunch. That you know something about this. That you too have some interest in finding the truth.”

“ _Fate…_ ” Colleen whispered in awe.

“Mrs. Holt? Are - may I… come in?”

"Yes - yes, sorry, Mrs... Sanchez, was it?" Colleen said, shaking her head to clear it and stepping aside.

"Please, call me Rosa," the woman said as she crossed into the house. Colleen let the door fall shut behind them, then relocked and latched it. Rosa watched with an expression of understanding.

"Rosa... I'm sorry to hear about your son." She held out the picture and Rosa took it, gazing at it again for a moment before folding it carefully and returning it to her wallet. "My daughter Katie, she was enrolled at the Garrison. She went missing at the same time. They told me the same thing - 'presumed dead.' So no, I don't know anything more than you... but I don't believe a word of it, and I'm going to find the truth. Are you going to help me?"

Rosa smiled as broadly as her son in the photograph and let her purse drop to the floor with a thud.

"Let me tell you everything I've learned."

 

~

 

Pidge had never, even with her new lot in life, put much stock in the concept of fate. Poetry interested her far less than it did her mother. Equations were far more potent descriptors than metaphor. Though she supposed, looking back, that may be only because she had never before been trying to describe _people_.

 _Quintessence???_ she noted down on her holoscreen as Allura asked her patients about the substance. To Pidge’s surprise (and slight annoyance), all of them except Keith seemed to know exactly what the Princess was talking about. _Bodies produce quintessence (to undetermined age),_ she added to her notes. She would ask about that later. Right now she was observing.

“Our quintessence production levels out after the larval stage,” Queen Wooth said wistfully, in answer to Allura’s question. “We are all well beyond that age.”

“So am I,” Keith’s mom answered - had she ever told them her name? - “but Keith should be fine.”

“What?” Keith said, pretty eloquently voicing Pidge’s own question. “Why am I the only person here who doesn’t know what’s going on?”

Allura actually looked like she was about to answer, when Lance’s voice rose up and threw her off.

“Wh - what, are you asking me?” he was sputtering at the Queen. “You mean Keith? I don’t - why would I know something like that?”

Pidge raised her eyebrows in interest as she watched Lance react to the ensuing silence. It was clear from his panic response he hadn't meant everyone to hear. What had the Queen asked him?

“ _Whatever_ ,” Keith eventually growled, turning toward the exit. Surprisingly, this seemed to upset Lance.

“H - hey, wait!” he called weakly, drained of his usual confidence. Keith looked back with unveiled irritation. “Uh,” Lance continued, a little frantic, as if belatedly searching for a reason to have spoken. “Don’t you need your leak plugged, or…?”

Pidge cringed internally at the phrasing, but Lance showed no signs of joking.

“Yeah,” Keith said. “Come get me when it’s my turn.”

“Right!” said Allura quickly. “Keith will take the last turn. Now, if the rest of you will follow me, we can start the healing process…”

She nudged past Keith, nodding stiffly, and led her patients out of the hangar. Keith waited silently for them to pass, then took up the rear. He was at the threshold when Lance called out to him  _again_.

“Keith!”

“ _What._ ”

“Um, I dunno, shouldn’t we like - ” Lance glanced to Shiro for support “ - like debrief? Or something?”

At that, Keith only seemed to turn inward - Pidge wasn’t entirely sure he’d even processed the question. He stared down at the floor for a moment without answering, a look of discomfort and concentration on his face. Then he turned to face forward and continued out the door without pausing.

“Keith? Hey, listen to me when I’m talking - Keith!”

“Lance.” Shiro was frowning at him. “Leave him alone. There’ll be time for that later. We have other work to do now. Right, Coran?”

Coran hummed, stroking his mustache in thought.

“Actually, Number Two, I don’t know there’s much you all can do at the moment. I suppose I could use some help scanning for local bioavailable reserves of quintessential potential energy.”

“ _Two_?” Shiro repeated incredulously. Lance elbowed Hunk in the side.

“Sounds like you’re up, buddy,” he said, voice thin and a little weak. Hunk rubbed the back of his neck. Pidge looked down at her holoscreen, typing nothing, letting the ambient conversation run in the background of her brain as she mentally examined her thoughts and observations. 

_“Yeah, I dunno, I don’t wanna step on anyone’s toes here… maybe we should take official measurements…”_

_"What? No, dude. I meant that techno-engineering mumbo jumbo Coran was spouting."_

It wasn't that Lance was bugging Keith any more than usual - it was that he didn't seem to mean it. And unlike Keith, Lance knew how to read people. It would have been clear to him that Keith wanted to be left alone, yet after one unsuccessful and frankly embarrassing attempt to connect with him, Lance had deliberately exposed himself to further humiliation.

_“Oh. Yeah. Okay, well, I don’t know really know anything about this quintessence stuff, but I’ll help in any way I can.”_

_“Don’t worry, my boy, you’ll pick it up in no time! Come, I’ll show you how to reprogram the parameters of the the Castle’s scan function!”_

Something was affecting his judgment, changing his very behavior - and Pidge had an inkling what it was. Something she'd only heard about secondhand in accounts, which she'd always assumed were exaggerated until she witnessed its effects for herself....

_“Okay, that I can do, it’s just…”_

When she looked up, two sets of footsteps were fading down the corridor and Shiro and Lance were the only people left in the room. Shiro looked as tired as always, and Lance - Lance seemed distant, like he got when feeling homesick.

“Well....... looks like there’s nothing we can do right now,” he said. “Might as well take the time to rest - you sure look like you could use it, Shiro. When was the last time you even slept?”

For a second it looked like Shiro was going to protest, but then his shoulders slumped and he sighed.

“No… Lance, you’re right. This is a rare opportunity to rest. You both should take advantage of it, too.”

It wasn’t till Lance looked at her and cleared his throat that Pidge realized she had been watching him intently.

“Well then, Pidge, my… girl. You heard the man,” he said, jabbing a thumb back at Shiro as he retired silently to his room. “Uh, guess I’m gonna…”

"Look for Keith?" Pidge supplied.

"What? No!" fumed Lance, obviously lying. Pidge narrowed her eyes.

"Mhm. Let's see. Decreased mental and social acuity... obsessively seeking the company of the limerent object... blushing... check, check, and check _mate_ , Lance."

"I'm lost, are we talking about chess or poems?"

" _What_? Neither, Lance... let's just say you seemed  _awfully_ interested in getting _debriefed_ by Keith just a minute ago."

"I - wha - no!" Lance sputtered, affronted.

"Stuttering is another symptom."

"Of  _what_?"

"Colloquially speaking," Pidge flashed him a wide, conniving grin, "you have a crush."

"On Keith?" Lance balked. "Th - that's stupid!"

"Well... I'm no expert," Pidge shrugged, "but as I noted, you _do_ exhibit several of the most common physiological signs. Not to mention your propensity for making bad decisions." She paused for a moment to size him up, eyes brightening with epiphany. "Actually, this is starting to make a lot more sense..."

"Asshole! Just because I don't know what your saying doesn't mean I can't tell when you're making fun of me! Anyway your science sucks," Lance pouted, looking away and crossing his arms. It was only a second before the indignance melted into a more vulnerable expression and Lance peeked back with petulant kind of pleading look. "You - you're not gonna tell anyone else about your dumb science theory... are you?"

Even Pidge couldn't help but feel a pang of empathy at that.

"I won't say anything," she promised, then paused for effect. " _Unless_ it starts slowing you down. We are not getting our asses handed to us because you were too distracted staring at your dream mullet. Everyone needs you at one hundred percent, so... let it out however you need to, just leave your baggage off the battlefield."

"Jesus," Lance sighed, but didn't argue. "You sound like Shiro."

"Please. Shiro has never said a four letter word in his life."

"I don't believe that for a second," Lance laughed. "Anyway, if your _done_ now, I'm really gonna like..." He jabbed at the door with his thumb.

"Find Keith?"

"Ugh... oh, whatever. Yeah. I'm gonna go find Keith."

 

~

 

It wasn’t a long walk to the simulation room; but excepting the long slow hours under menace of death by exposure or asphyxiation they had just suffered in the Black Lion, it was the longest single interval Lorena had every spent with her fellow former prisoners. The Queen was not wasting a moment of it. 

“So what you are saying, is that the Paladin Queen is your daughter? So She _is_ a Virgin Queen. But why did She not mate in your absence?”

“Keith is my _son_ ,” Lorena explained for the second or tenth time. “Humans don’t have Queens."

“So... you are like the Galra?” Wooth said, narrowing Her third eyelids. “No hive structure, under the rule of _drones_ …?”

“No,” Lorena answered curtly. “We’re just… humans. We’re not like the Zzithlith _or_ the - ”

“Galra!” rose a cry from amid the tight-packed congress of Wooth’s hive-daughters. They scattered from their places in line and dove for cover. Lorena cast around in alarm until her eyes settled on two hulking purple figures frozen mid-stride in an intersecting hallway.

“What is the meaning of this?” the Queen cried from where she was now cowering behind the Princess. Lorena kept her gaze on the newcomers, and they stared back. Her eyes were wide and her mind racing.

“I might ask the same thing,” said the foremost, a scarred and stern figure with a long braid trailing down his back, “but I am not interested in the answer. We are here for the woman - ”

“You won’t get her!” cried Wooth, ascending on Her wings to rush the towering Galra. His companion, masked and silent behind him, flexed the fingers of his right hand but did not reach for his blade. His luxite blade with the oddly luminescent carving at its base just before the hilt...

“Wait!” shouted Lorena, even as the Princess moved forward in a placatory gesture of her own. “I don't think these are enemy Galra.”

Wooth stopped Herself inches from collision with Allura, who had moved between Her and the Galra, and retracted Her sting. Her daughters began to poke out of their hiding places. The scarred Galra continued as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“We wish only to speak with the woman. And the Red Paladin - he has safely returned?”

“Returned at least,” Allura answered quietly. “He and these prisoners were all hit by magic and are leaking quintessence. I’m afraid I can’t let you interrogate them until I’ve had a chance to patch them up.”

“The woman is the only one we wish to speak with,” the Galra said for a third time, studying Lorena with perceptive eyes. “And the Red Paladin was not affected by the magic?”

“My son was with us when we were hit, but he needed time alone. Don’t go looking for him until you’ve spoken to me,” Lorena answered coldly.

“Very well. We will await your return to health.” 

 

~

 He found Keith on the training deck, of course. His heart was pounding and his hands were shaking and Keith was jogging around the perimeter of the room, which made Lance irrationally angry. 

“Keith! Hey, what are you doing? Aren’t you, like, hurt?”

Keith didn’t stop, but he did acknowledge Lance with strength-sapping glare.

“What are _you_ doing here?” he panted on a pass by the entrance.

“What am - ?” Lance called after. “What - what are _you_ doing? Shouldn’t you be resting or…?”

Keith didn't answer, and Lance watched as he rounded another lap.

“No, seriously, dude - it looked - it sounded pretty bad, right?” Lance tried again as Keith passed him for the second time. “I mean, you were attacked with magic! Shiro ended up in the pod for that!”

On his next lap Keith skidded to a stop. His body was flushed and warm with exertion, and his eyes were narrowed as he looked at Lance.

“Are you worried about me?” he huffed.

“What? No!” Lance said immediately, distracted by the way Keith's bangs clung to his pink, sweat-sheened face. The rest of the mullet was pulled into a little black ponytail at the nape of his neck. That made him look older, or at least more mature. Lance kicked himself for his kneejerk answer. “I mean... not more than anyone else…”

“Fine,” Keith said cloyingly, taking off again at a brisk walk. “Is this better? Doctor Lance? I just need to move so I can think, so get off my case.”

Lance took a deep breath, then took off, jogging to catch up. Whether he worked up the courage to say anything or not, Lance wasn’t about to leave Keith alone to start sprinting again and overexert himself like an idiot. Keith just raised an eyebrow at him, too impatient to give Lance time to come up with a conversation starter.

“Can I help you?” he prompted

“I don’t trust you,” Lance blurted out. Shit. Keith looked away with a breathy  _hah!_ and took off running, leaving Lance scrambling to catch up.

“Maybe you and Allura have more in common than I thought!” he yelled back. Lance tucked his head and sprinted to overtake Keith's head start, verbally backtracking over his ill-spoken words.

“No! No, that’s not - Keith! Wait, _Keith_ , I just meant - I didn’t trust you to - not start running again like a dumbass and - Keith, it was just a stupid joke! Although _clearly_ \- hmph - !” Lance plowed straight into Keith, who had been slowing to a stop to hear out Lance's explanation. Keith stumbled forward with a cry but managed to keep his balance, while Lance ended up face first on the ground.

“What is your _problem_?” Keith whipped around to yell down at him, winded from his running and their collision. Lance clambereded to his feet and puffed himself up at the challenge, but as soon as he saw the defensive shift in Keith's posture, he remembered himself, and deflated.

“Look, I really didn’t mean for that to…" Lance began. He scratched the back of his head and coughed. Breaking the pattern of his and Keith's petty rivalry was nerve-wracking and uncomfortable, and he couldn't think of a way to finish that sentence, so he abandoned it and moved on to the important part: "You know I don’t not trust you. I mean, not any less than before…”

Keith blinked slowly at him.

“Thanks? I guess.”

“So…” Lance continued, trying to steer the conversation to a better track, “what were you thinking about?”

“I’m sorry?”

“No need to apologize.”

“...What?”

“Um - no, it’s just another… you know, most people actually think I’m pretty funny…” Lance muttered, looking hopefully at Keith through his lashes. Keith returned the look blankly.

“Why?"

Oh.

“Uh, never mind. I was just asking - like, you said you were walking to help you think. So I was just… wondering what you were thinking about.”

“Uh...” Keith disappeared into his mind, and Lance did his best to keep his expression open and interested while he waited for him to resurface. “Hey. Lance…” he said finally, “do you ever, sometimes just… know what someone else is thinking? Or feeling?”

That threw Lance for a loop.

“You mean… um. You mean like... a psychic…?”

“No, no, not telling the future, more like… more like a telepath, I guess, or an empath? Or… or like how you communicate with your Lion. Except with a person.”

“Oh. Uh. No?” Lance replied, a terrible sense of foreboding tingling across the surface of his skin. “Do - do you…?”

No response. The feeling sunk deeper, seizing Lance’s insides.

“So - so you do? You can like… read my mind?” he squeaked. “You can’t read my mind can you? Is that a Galra thing? Can Galra read minds? ...Keith?” - but he was out the door, leaving Lance to make his desperate amends vainly to an empty room - “It’s okay,” he called. “You don’t have to answer that if you’re… not… comfortable. _Shit_!”

He should have known better than to take Pidge up on any interpersonal advice. Lance wandered aimlessly out of the training deck, winding through the hallways of the Castle as he sorted through his internal conflict.

First, he panicked.

Obviously Keith had read his mind. Keith had seen his creepy thoughts, his memories of the previous night, and he thought Lance was a creep and he probably thought Lance just wanted to have sex with him (did Lance want to have sex with him??) and to make it worse, Lance couldn’t stop bringing up that Galra thing. Why had he said that? Was that what put Keith off? He probably thought Lance was racist or some creepy xenophile who got off on aliens. Did Lance give off that vibe? Yeah, he decided, probably...

Then, he was angry.

What the fuck gave Keith the right to read his mind anyhow? Asshole. He’d always had it out for Lance, right from the beginning. And so what if Lance was curious back? He couldn’t read minds, so if he wanted to know something, he had to ask, like a regular person. Lance had been on Keith’s side of cultural exchange before. He didn’t resent the good-faith questions, his white friends asking him how to say "go deep throat a cattle prod," or whatever, in Spanish, so Keith could damn well deal with some normal human curiosity about the revelation that he was a fucking psychic.

Then he second-guessed himself.

Keith hadn’t actually… said that he could read minds. Maybe Lance was just overthinking it. Reading too much into things. At this point he felt like he’d swallowed leaden ball of doubt and despair that was now sitting in his stomach undigested, the way despair does. Once again, nothing really seemed to matter...

Lance blinked his attention back to his body and the space around him and realized he had been about to walk into a wall. He sighed and turned to wander despondently in a different direction when a shimmer of something caught his eye.

It was coming from the solid wall, radiating a feeling of home that made Lance’s eyes water involuntarily. It was blue, but it wasn’t _Blue_. He looked harder, concentrating on the spot until the shimmer took a familiar shape:

It was a teardrop of pink and blue flame that burned like the desert and the sky, the beach and the ocean, on a blinding summer day. The longer he looked, the harder it drew his focus, intense and draining. The outline of a dark silhouette sharpened at the base of the fire.

 _Am - am I - looking_ through _the wall…?_

“Lance?” a soft voice shattered the vision. “What are you doing?”

Lance jumped and whipped his head around and -

"Shiro!' he yelped. Of course it was Shiro, always asking the impossible. What _was_ he doing? "I - I thought you were resting?"

Shiro apparently couldn’t see the now-dissolved vision in the wall. Had it even been there in the first place? Except the afterimage still lingered over the reality right in front of him. His eyes crossed, uncrossed. He willed them to focus.

“I was," Shiro chuckled mildly. "Got a solid forty-five minutes of sleep. If you're looking for Keith, I don't think he's being healed yet.”

“Why would I go looked for _him_?”

“Calm down, Lance. You think I'd expect you to leave him alone just because I told you not to follow him?”

“So Keith can wander around alone but I’m on leash?” Lance mumbled in challenge.

Shiro studied him for a moment, head tilted in an almost disappointed look of understanding.

“Do you _want_ to be left alone?”

It was an honest question but Lance suspected Shiro had guessed the answer. He shook his head and stared down at Shiro’s feet.

“Listen… we’re all a little worried. I know you and Keith have that… ‘rivals’ thing going, and it’s worked for you, for the most part.” Shiro sighed and his feet fidgeted. Lance shifted his gaze up to see Shiro looking not at him, but away at the wall Lance had been dissociating into moments before.

“I don’t know how long we’re going to be here, away from Earth, and - Lance,” Shiro finally looked right at him, emphasizing the words with his eyes. “The five of us are more than just teammates, we’re - ”

“Psychically bonded teammates who use telepathy to pilot a huge giant robot made of smaller giant robots?”

“What? No - well, yes, but Lance, this is... we’re all we have out here. I guess I... I just hope you two can learn to relate to each other more authentically. Keith, he... that's not easy for him to do, but. I hope you know, you don’t always have to be hiding behind your... antagonism. Or. Puns.”

 _Tried that_ , Lance thought bitterly. He resented the impression that Shiro was singling him out for fault, and he wanted to defend himself, to spit out that story and say, _see? I’m not the problem here!_ But the vague fear that Shiro guessed those feelings, too, grated against his nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard.

So instead he pulled down his glittering mask of self confidence. Because of all the people in space, Shiro was the last one to whom Lance wanted to show his failures. Though his admiration had grown more complex and faceted, Shiro was still his hero. A flawed hero, but greater for it.

“But maybe... puns _are_ my authentic self,” he said with a grin and a wink.

“Maybe…” Shiro echoed pensively, “but I think there’s more to you than that.”

 

~

 

Kolivan was waiting for Terran Blade when she emerged from the healing room. Antok, to his left and a little behind, spoke as soon as she came into view.

"Woman. We must ask: what did you tell - "

"No!" she said immediately. "I want answers first. You're Blades, aren't you? Is that right?" She turned around to face them. Kolivan stepped forward.

"Yes," he answered.

"Then you  _must_ tell me what happened. Did they take him? Did - did _you_ take my son - " 

"He was raised to his destiny," said Kolivan calmly. "Do you know what would have happened to your planet, to _him_ , were he not?"

"That doesn't give you the right to - he's a _child_. My child!"

"Child? He is not now very much younger, is he, than were you?"

"Younger _enough_!" the Terran Marmor stammered in outrage. "He was _young_ when I - I just wanted to give him a normal childhood! What did you do? Did you kidnap him? Did you... _k_ _ill_ Eugene - ?"

"Of course not - "

Antok scoffed, interrupting his leader.

"Your son was more of a man at ten than his father ever was. He never wanted the boy."

"What would  _you_ know?" the woman snarled. "Were you there?"

"Antok..." Kolivan cautioned, but his subordinate already had his hand at his face, and a second later, his mask phased away.

"We - your people loved him," he said. "Showed him more than love. We showed him respect, Lorena. He belonged with us."

"Antok?" the woman whispered shakily, an inflection Kolivan had learnt to associate with distress. 

"We did what we deemed best. It didn't go as we'd planned but it paid off. To the benefit of the whole of our universe. We are still reaping what we have sown."

"I'm not," the human maintained. "Keith isn't, either. You defied my explicit wishes, Antok. Humans - even our kind - we're not _like_ you. We need more time to - to grow a certain way, learn certain things, and if we don't get that there are _always_ consequences."

The words rung through a viscous silence that settled between the two sides of the debate.

"What is done is done," Kolivan said finally, "on both sides. So we will pardon you if you will forgive us - quiet, Antok, my word is good - but we must know the damage. We must know what you told Lotor, and what you told your son."

 

*******

 _“Communications Officer Grak tells me we have intercepted messages from a planet near our newest acquisition. Do you know it?"_  

_“A primitive arm of a primitive galaxy, sire. It won’t be worth our conquest for another millennium.”_

_“My son has tells me a different story. He has Felt magic and a powerful quintessence there. A resource, perhaps, the savages haven’t uncovered.”_

_“The fancies of your foolhardy offspring have led us already to one worthless world, My Lord. I do not trust his Feelings.”_

_“Lotor is a fool indeed, but he is a capable Druid. I will treat with this people, Witch, and you will divine what magic they have hid.”_

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Queen's pronouns are capitalized because I felt a need to distinguish Her as a separate gender from Her daughters/workers, even though both are biologically female (in beehives, the queen is a sexually mature female, whereas the workers do not reach sexual maturity).


	7. Fifth Element

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allura finishes plugging the leaks, Coran explains quintessence, and Lance finally gets a chance to talk to Keith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAHAHAHAHA did you think I had abandoned this? No such luck.
> 
> Here's a quick recap as I posted the last chapter four fucking months ago and hopefully some of you have slept since then:
> 
> Keith, his mom Lorena, and the Zzithlith make it back to the Casteship but are leaking quintessence, so Allura has to heal them. Lance finds Keith training and tries in vain to initiate bonding moment 2.0. Shiro later finds him staring at the wall to the simulation room where Allura is healing and gives him an uplifting talk. Lorena tells off the Marmor.

Allura had not entered the simulation room since the destruction of her father’s AI. Its phantom fields of juniberries were a bittersweet reminder of that loss - but the room had other practical uses and Allura swallowed her pain like a lump of Paladin lunch.

Keith’s mother was first. Touching the panel at the center of the room, Allura pushed down memories of the pink-starred grass of mountain and meadow, to focus on the task at hand. But then Lorena’s quintessence materialized, pink as Altea’s flowers and  blue as its smiling sky. Healing her was agonizing, and drawn out by Allura’s inexperience. When it was over she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

The Queen came next.

 

~

 

They walked in awkward silence. Lance followed Shiro away from the simulation room, through a winding maze of corridors, but he hadn’t said anything since they started walking.

Shiro fixated on that detail: silence was a scarce commodity with Lance and the absence of his voice rung loud. Shiro didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t know how to read this reticence, so he didn’t know what to say to help.

“I mean,” Lance said finally, as if continuing a conversation he’d been having in his head, “I get why _Keith_ is bad at it, but I don’t even have the, you know, the alien excuse…” he was looking at his feet.

“Bad? At what?” Shiro probed casually.

“People,” grumbled Lance. “I guess I can’t be better than him at anything, even things he sucks at…”

“Bad at - Lance what are you talking about?” Shiro said in genuine confusion. “You’re one of the most outgoing people I’ve ever met.”

Lance backtracked, stumbling over justifications. “No, I mean, yeah - I can - but - ” he growled in frustration “you know, like you said - I’m not… ‘authentic,’ or whatever. ‘Sincere.’ Like you.”

“You think I knew how to be any of that at your age? I barely knew how to take myself seriously at the start of the Kerberos mission. I was 23, Lance, my first extended off-planet - ” Lance was staring at him in quiet alarm before Shiro realized what he was saying. He cut himself off abruptly and sighed. “What I mean to say is… things like that are _skills_ ," he muttered. "You have to learn them, practice them.”

And despite everything that had happened to him, the years he had on his younger teammates and the hard-earned maturity of imprisonment and torture, Shiro was still learning, practicing, himself - practicing patience, learning to be strong even when dark purple nightmares passed over his waking mind like a mist. Sometimes, he just wanted to tell someone that it wasn't fair. Someone who would listen while, in the halting syntax of one recalling a dream, Shrio plucked the fragments of heart-freezing fear out of his memories like shrapnel from a wound. 

“Well, I guess I’m getting a lot of practice at least…” Lance mumbled, and Shiro got the sense he was picking at a wound of his own. He remembered the anxious uncertainty of seventeen, perhaps better than the half-suppressed horror of his captivity. He knew he couldn't unload his baggage on his teammates, these... kids, who had troubles and fears of their own.

“Lance… if you want some practice people skills, you could start by telling me what’s bothering you,” he said instead.

Lance stopped walking and frowned at the floor.

“Do you… know why Keith doesn’t like me?” he said suddenly. Shiro blinked in genuine surprise.

“Keith… hasn’t ever told me he dislikes you, Lance. I think he just acts that way because that’s how you act towards him.”

“Yeah…” Lance muttered unconvincedly, chewing his lower lip. “I dunno I - I think it’s the… ‘alien’ thing that, you know…” Lance punctuated the word _alien_ with consternated huff, “that makes him like that. But I don’t know how to bring it up without setting him off.”

“Huh,” Shiro said honestly. “I hadn’t even considered that might be part of it. But it’s an interesting thought…”

“You mean that wasn’t, like, the first thing you thought of?” Lance remarked drily. “You know, when… you found out?”

Shiro gave him an amused half smile.

“I’ve known Keith longer than you have, Lance. To me it’s just - ” undiagnosed autism, Shiro didn’t say. “ - to me it’s just… _Keith_. And, maybe I’m biased, but - I can’t bring myself to see much of Keith in… most of the Galra I’ve encountered. Or vice versa.”

It seemed he'd said something wrong. Lance didn't react, but he didn't say anything else, and Shiro didn't know what else to say either. He realized he had no real reason to believe Keith's... neurodivergence  _wasn’t_  the result some odd interaction of human and Galra genetics that... 

“No - no, obviously, you’re right. I…  I don’t see that in him either,” said Lance finally.

They fell into their own thoughts again, and Shiro had nothing left to draw Lance out. So they wandered a while longer in inattentive silence, unconsciously following each other back to the bridge.

 

~

 

After the challenge of Keith’s mother, healing the Zzithlith was a welcome reprise. Allura was grateful for the monotony of their dull, earthy quintessence. It was soothing, repetitive, and allowed her to develop a rhythm. As the motions of the healing became ingrained in her muscle memory, she focused her mind on preparing mentally for her final patient.

 

~

 

“Hunk? Hey, Hunk,” Pidge grumbled to a screen on her chair’s consul.

“Huh?” Hunk’s voice crackled up into the bridge from the engine room far below deck. “Oh, hey, Pidge… what’s up?”

“Okay, so I was thinking,” she began, growing slightly more animated as she spoke, “and, so, you know I have a shadow copy of Shiro’s arm interface on my laptop now…”

“You do?”

“Yeah, remember when we extracted those coordinates - ”

“Pidge… if you’re about to suggest that we hack Shiro’s arm - ”

“What? No, never, I would... never do anything so unethical and - okay so more like _jailbreak_ , actually…”

“Hunk!” came Coran’s voice from offscreen. “Come hold this wire while I resolder it!”

“Yeah, just a - ” Hunk called wearily, then groaned, jabbing a thumb back in the direction of Coran’s voice. “Alright, Pidge, unless you’ve got something really important to say - ”

“Wait... any status updates?” Pidge said hurriedly. “Look, I’ve got a bridge of anxious Zzithlith and you’re the only other person I could find. Please help.”

Behind her a small worker scuttled through the door to the bridge, waggling her antennae at her sisters and Queen. They brushed feelers with her one by one and then another left to take her place in the healing room.

“Coran, did you hear that?” Hunk called, plodding offscreen to help with the soldering. Pidge waited in annoyance.

“Hello?” she prompted as the loud sound of equipment died down. Coran’s grease-streaked face popped into frame, making her start.

“Hello Pidge! Sorry to keep you waiting! I’m actually just on my way up to plot the coordinates in the ship’s navigation!” he said as he drifted back out of view. “Just give me one tick…” _thud!_ \- Pidge watched impassively as series of loud crashes sounded from the general direction of Coran’s voice - “...one dobosh,” he amended, “and I’ll be up to brief you all!”

“Should I - ” Hunk began.

“No!” squeaked Coran, “I’ve got it! You just keep narrowing the search area!”

“Are you - ”

Pidge disconnected the feed.

 

~

 

Hunk huddled over a tangle of cables and cords, trying to shut down the overloaded medium-range sensors without cutting off any of the ship's essential functions.

"Red wire... blue wire... oh god, what color even is...?"

A spark shot onto Hunk's vest and he jumped back with a yelp, frantically patting down his front with the palm of his hand. Whatever it was, quintessence was potent. He leaned back over the circuit with a shaky sigh.

“Hunk!” Coran’s voice pierced through his blanket of concentration.

“Here! I’m here!” he reported, starting. “Almost got the fire under control!”

“Fire?” echoed the panicked voice of Zzithlith Queen from somewhere on the bridge. _Oops_.

“Uh, yes,” coughed Coran, over the ship’s comm, “never mind that - have you got the exact coordinates for the source?”

Hunk glanced at readings from the sensor screen to check how the scan had progressed.

“Yeah!” he called back. “I’m within kilometers of the location on the planet’s surface.”

“Oh, no, no,” echoed the high, buzzing voice of Wooth again, “Listen to me: if there is a spring of quintessence left in this Galaxy, it will be crawling with Galra miners and troops!”

“Huh, you don’t say…” Hunk muttered, distractedly thumbing over the bundle of wires. “Uh, okay - Coran? Just out of curiosity, what would happen if we _didn’t_ restore their quintessence?”

Coran’s voice hummed through the line as he considered the question. “Well,” he finally said, “best case scenario is they’ll just have shortened lifespans.”

“That is the _best_ case?” cried Wooth.

“Yes,” Coran affirmed sharply. “So get those coordinates and join us on the double, Hunk!”

The screen went blank before Hunk was given a chance to reply.

 

~

 

Allura was staring at the ground as Keith finally entered, and when she plucked up the courage to look at him, he was stony-faced, arms crossed, eyes intently focused on nothing.

“Keith… I just wanted to say, before we start, I’m - ”

“It’s fine. Just… let’s get this done with. You’ll have time to feel bad after.”

The words were sharp but his voice and eyes had softened by the end, vulnerably soft and almost scared. Allura tried to smile.

“Don’t worry,” she assured him. “It doesn’t hurt.” She touched the damaged panel at the center of the room and Keith’s quintessence flared up, multicolored and strong. “You won’t feel anything. Just relax."

 

~

 

Wooth worried around the bridge in sharp, agitated zigzags, phasing through the holographic images of nearby planets and stars. The Altean Queen's attendant, Coran, was zooming in and out on the same cluster of stars, looking for something. His eye twitched as Wooth buzzed absently through the cluster, too distracted to notice or care. The door to the bridge whooshed open and Another Paladin entered - Wooth spared him no second glance. 

"Uh, your majesty..." began Pidge, seated at her station, eyes flitting between her holoscreen and the map. Another flash of movement at the entrance caught the Queen's attention - on the heels of the Other Paladin came her Favorite, Lance, shuffling into the room. He looked duller than before, his veneer of charm scratched and something hesitant peaking out through the fissure. It was strangely intimate and wholly endearing.

“Queen Wooth,” Pidge continued, coughing for attention. “You seem to have some understanding of Galra operations. Do - have you ever come across any prisoners from my planet - Earth?”

“I suppose you mean besides Lorena,” said Wooth, turning Her head from Lance to address the question. Pidge nodded.

“I’m afraid I actually know very little,” She continued sadly: “only that which I learned in my captivity, and what our planet picked up in radio chatter shortly… shortly before we were invaded.”

“Hm…” Pidge frowned down at her lap.

The Other Paladin cleared his throat.

“Have we made any progress?” he asked, stepping further into the room.

“Indeed, Shiro!” Coran replied brightly, though his focus stayed on the cluster of stars he was searching. “In fact we’re just waiting for - ”

“Coran! I’m here!” the smell of sweat and smoke wafted into the room, and Hunk gave a brief apologetic smile as he brushed past Lance and… Shiro, Wooth recalled. He joined Coran at the star cluster he had been studying. Taking hold of the hologram, Hunk manipulated the map with confidence, zooming in on one star until it’s solar system could be discerned.

“Okay,” he panted, pointing to a small dot orbiting it a few planets out. “Here.”

Using his fingers to zoom in further until the pinprick of a planet was the size of his head. “So the reserve is somewhere in this valley,” he said, gesturing. “I’ve tracked it to… within one square kilometer, but like you said, Allura should be able to sense it when we’re that close.”

Coran nodded.

“I still don’t trust this site,” advised Queen Wooth, hovering anxiously,

“Hey, you heard Coran,” Pidge put in. “It’s between this and a shortened lifespan - or worse.”

“Yeah, well, I mean, the Queen might have a point,” argued Hunk. “Remember what happened at the Galactic Hub? Galra are dead serious about this quintessence stuff, and I mean _dead_. If they are around... it could lead to a shortened lifespan for all of us.”

“That’s a risk we’ve all accepted from the beginning,” Shiro reminded him.

“I hate to say it, but that’s not exactly true,” Lance spoke up. “I mean, _we_ all did, yeah, but - ” he gestured loosely at the Zzithlith “ - _they_ didn’t.”

A pang of gratitude and affection sparked up in the tips of Wooth’s antenae.

“All we want is to go home,” the Queen said wearily. “But we don’t even know if our hive still hangs. It is many years since the the Galra took it.”

Pidge looked up again, studying the starmap that surrounded them.

“Can you show us where it is?”

Wooth nodded. Floating to the middle of the map she zoomed away from Hunk’s planet and began scrolling through light-years of space with deft flicks of her forelimbs. After several seconds she stopped, cradling a small point in front of her.

“Here,” she buzzed quietly, throwing her legs wide to zoom in on a smooth globe, striated with clouds.

“That’s certainly far from here,” Coran mused pulling on his mustache. “In fact, it’s… why, it’s very close to your Earth! Not more than five hundred parsecs, I would guess!”

Pidge leaned in, studying the hologram closely.

Then Queen Wooth released the projection, and it zoomed back to its default view.

“Very far from here,” She agreed. “But we have nowhere else to go. If we return to nothing but scorched earth we will die homeless in the void.”

“We have to take them there,” Lance spoke again, suddenly, and with surprising passion. His eyes were shining, swimming through the map. “If - if their home is gone - ”

“Lance,” Shiro began, but Pidge cut in.

“I’m with Lance.” Shiro opened his mouth to respond but she continued: “And while we’re there, I think we should check on the Earth.”

“Alright, Paladins,” said Coran. “We’ll have time to discuss this later, but right now I’d like to set a course for the quintessence reserve! We can scout the planet for Galra presence before we send you down, Queen Wooth, if that makes you feel better. Then after Allura sets you right as a razor sharp rock, we can figure out our next step!”

“That doesn’t sound very right,” muttered Lance, and Wooth had to agree.

 

~

 

The red and blue flames of Keith’s quintessence disappeared as Allura finally removed her hand from the panel at the center of the simulation room.

“That’s it?” said Keith.

“Yes - not so bad, right?” Allura replied weakly. Keith didn’t answer, but turned to the exit.

“We should regroup with the others. See what they’ve found.”

“Yes, but - Keith, wait! Just let me…” Allura sighed and straightened, smoothing out the folds at the front of her gown. “Please allow me to formally apologize for my… atrocious behavior toward you before the rescue mission. I should never have doubted your character and I hope I have not permanently damaged your opinion of mine. Of, er, my character, that is…” she finished awkwardly.

“It’s fine,” Keith replied simply. “Really. Now, I’m going to the bridge.”

 

~

 

“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” said Pidge as Coran finished entering the planet’s coordinates into the ship. “What exactly _is_ quintessence?”

What the Queen had said earlier, about radio chatter preceding the invasion of Her planet, was still ringing through Pidge’s mind like an alarm bell.

“That’s something I’d like to know, too,” said a voice from the door. It was Keith, sauntering toward his seat, looking angrier than normal. Lance choked loudly.

“You mean even _you_ have never heard of it Pidge?” said Allura, trailing Keith into the room and looking a little winded. She stopped to lean against the wall just inside the door.

“Well, no - not exactly,” Pidge explained, pushing her glasses up her nose. “It’s a mythical concept in some Earth cultures: the fifth element.”

“Boron?” said Hunk.

“No, it’s mythical, Hunk. ‘Fifth element’ is just what the word means.”

“Ah!” hummed Lance. “Now that makes sense.”

“What part of this makes sense?” whined Hunk.

“Umm… honestly just the name.  So, wait, if there’s a quintessence does that mean there’s also, like… primessence? Or uh… segunda… essence…?”

“Technically I think that one would be _duessence_ ,” corrected Pidge.

“Uh, no, I speak Spanish, and - ”

“It’s not _Spanish_ , Lance, it’s _Latin_.”

“ _I’m_ Latin!”

“It doesn’t matter what the word means,” snapped Keith, causing Lance to jump. “Why do you have to be so facetious?”

“I wasn’t being facetious,” Lance objected desperately, “I - !”

“Yes you were! Do you even know what facetious means?”

“What? Of course I know what it means! Why do you have to be so - so - _condescending_?”

Pidge groaned in vexation, burying her face in her hand, and regretted starting an argument with Lance. With a sudden thought and a sparkle, she cocked a maniacal grin.

“ _Lance_ ,” she interrupted. “Maybe you should take your _Queen_ and do some independent study of the _sixth_ element!”

“Carbon??” said Hunk, looking helplessly lost.

Terrible realization was already dawning on Lance’s face as Pidge shrieked,

“SEXtessence!” and fell off her chair laughing.

“Why, I’ve never heard of that,” remarked Coran.

“Alright!” Shiro sighed. “Come on. Pidge asked a question, so let them finish explaining.”

Pidge sat back up to stick her tongue out at Lance, who pouted red-faced down into his crossed arms like a sore loser.

“Thank you, Shiro!” Coran agreed. He looked briefly at Allura, who just shook her head wearily and gestured at him to continue. “Now, as I was about to say, quintessence is the stuff of life itself! Of magic!”

“Oh. Okay. My mistake,” said Hunk with a certain amount of relief. “I thought this was going to be a scientific discussion but now I understand why I am so out of my depth.”

“But magic is science!” persisted Coran. “It follows all the rules - it’s just those rules don’t sync up with the other fundamental forces. Those can be unified, but magic stands out on its own!”

“Yeah, no, I’m still lost,” sighed Hunk. “Fundamental forces - you mean gravity, electromagnetic, weak, strong...?”

“Yes, and magic.”

“Wait - are you saying,” exclaimed Pidge, “that Alteans unified the fundamental forces?”

“Yes! Except magic, the fifth fundamental force - pay attention!”

“So…” Hunk mused, rubbing his chin. “What you’re saying is that quintessence is to magic, as color charge is to the strong force?”

“Exactly! And magical interaction allows for life the same way strong interaction allows for massive particles!

“Okay, I think I get it now…”

“I’m glad you understand this, Hunk,” said Shiro, “but do you think you could break it down for the rest of us? I’m still pretty confused.”

Pidge rolled her eyes.

“Basically, magic creates life the way gravity creates… like, solar systems and stars and… habitable planets…”

“By holding things together...?” offered Keith.

“No, no, not things!” said Coran. “Consciousness! Sentience! The essence of existence! Magic draws energy from the quintessential plane and allows for arrangements of matter that are greater than the sum of their parts!”

“Like…” Lance ventured slowly, “like an aura? Like, like, that panel you were looking at, Allura? You know, earlier?”

Coran looked back with raised eyebrows. Allura seemed to have blinked back into the conversation just at the sound of her name.

“Earlier?”

“Yeah, you know! When - when - Allura?”

The Princess was staring cross eyed at the floor, so intently that she stumbled forward away from the wall on unsure and wobbling feet.

“Princess!” cried Coran. Lance was already rushing back to catch her.

 

~

 

It was accessible - but only by boat. So Colleen scheduled them a guided tour. The park’s popularity had grown since her last visit. The Garrison had breathed new life what was once swathes of desert, dotted with ranchland and small towns of economically disadvantaged people. This state park was the only piece of public land left untouched.

“If you look there,” the tour guide pointed, “you can see the leaping panther that gives this site its name. The people who made these paintings probably revered it as a religious or totemic symbol. Now over there - can you see the guy with the cat ears? He’s probably a shaman, …”

The cave looked the same as Colleen remembered. Nothing extraordinary, nothing that stood out. She kept glancing at Rosa, who studied the art carefully and with fresh eyes, listening intently to what their guide had to say.

“Now, as some of you may be old enough to remember, there was a sort of resurgence of this… ‘religion,’ back in the twenty-teens? Well, for your younger visitors, there was a cult that got some press, claiming to be descendants of the indigenous artists. The movement largely died out. Or… so we thought! Now, fast forward to a couple of months ago, some residents in the area claim to have seen a flying panther, just like our friend on the wall there, ascending as a spirit into the sky. Some have taken it to be a sign or omen, though according to eyewitness reports, it originated not from this cave but from another archaeological site a few miles north. Oh, yes, a question - you, in the white!”

Rosa lowered her upstretched arm.

“The ones who saw the panther? Are they the same people from the cult?”

“Um… well, since it’s a cult there’s no real data on membership… as far as I know, at least. But I’d say it’s a good bet. Any other - yes, you?”

“About how far north is this other site?” asked Colleen.

 

~

 

“I’m fine,” Allura protested again. She was wedged between Shiro and Coran as they half-supported, half-dragged her to the healing pods. “Really - I’m ready to wormhole. Have you found a source of quintessence?”

“Yes,” answered Coran, “and don’t worry! It’s close enough that we won’t need to wormhole. But now that the leaks are fixed there’s no immediate danger, and you’re in no condition to do anymore magic just yet. Take a couple of vargas in the healing pod and by the time we reach the planet, you’ll be good as new, Princess!”

Allura sighed, feeling ignored and somehow guilty. Of failing to finish her task… of failing to finish her apology, to Keith, who had been the only one on the bridge to take her side…

Her eyes turned hesitantly to the same narrow capsule where she’d spent the last ten thousand years. It’s phantom chill crept along her extremities, heavy in her feet, numb in her arms, and burning like frostbite in the tips of her ears.

She stepped into the pod.

A small surge of panic gripped her as the door whooshed shut and her consciousness began to slip. Would all her friends still be there when she woke up? What year would it be - what millennium?

The thoughts faded to nothingness.

 

~

 

Lance sulked in his seat on the bridge. Not only had Allura rejected his totally selfless and good-intentioned offers to help, Keith had had the audacity to accuse him of - of -

_“She doesn’t need your help, Lance. Do you ever listen to anything Allura says, or are you too busy being a creep?”_

_“Excuse me? I’m not a - I mean, you’re one to talk, at least I didn’t sneak off with her in the middle of the night like - like a - ”_

The quiet was thick after she left (with Shiro and Coran - of course, Keith had nothing to say about _that_ ) - but not too thick for Queen Wooth’s thin foreleg, which carved a path to Lance’s slumped shoulder and perched lightly on the curve of his back. Lance jumped.

“Once we are healed,” She began, not seeming to notice as he flinched under her touch, “will you really accompany us to our planet?”

“Uh, I don’t know - that’s not really my call to make, but if it was… I don’t wanna leave you stranded in space without a home, you know.”

“Such a gentle soul,” the Queen sighed, and Lance squirmed in his seat at the sound of it. “I hope you can see our glorious hive. If you had seen it before the attack - if you had seen me in the peak of my youth - !”

Lance felt like he was under a microphone. Their voices were the only sound in the still room and his skin prickled under the unintentional scrutiny of his teammates.

“Oh…” he assured Her hollowly, like reading from a cue card, “don’t worry, you still look glorious to me.” There was a choking noise from his right.

“You flatter me!” giggled the Queen.

“Oh… no…” Lance protested weakly, but Keith jumped in, catching him off guard.

“Yes, you are! Why do you keep encouraging her?”

“What? I - I don’t - ” Lance stared wide-eyed as Keith rose from his seat and stalked forward to level the Queen with a challenging look. “Sorry your highness - ” He grabbed Lance’s wrist; Lance jerked in surprise. “ - but _I’m_ the Queen of this hive, and I don’t share!”

Queen Wooth stared back in shock, offering only a startled,

“Oh!”

Lance gaped wild-eyed up at Keith. He was still staring down the Queen as she slowly processed the challenge.

“I - I’m sorry… Queen Keith,” she said finally, still confused and taken aback. “I meant no insult to your people’s hierarchy and customs… please… excuse me.”

Neither Lance nor Keith said anything until the sound of her fluttering wings had disappeared down the hallway, daughters scattering after her.

“What the _hell_ was that?” Lance finally screeched. His whole body was red, and his wrist was starting to sweat under Keith’s clammy, calloused grip. Keith turned to face him but Lance dropped his gaze.

“What? Did you _want_ her - that - to - ” Keith’s brain seemed to have caught up with his body and he dropped Lance’s wrist like it was on fire.

“No - !” Lance stammered, recoiling his hand at the same moment. “I mean - but that - !”

“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold up,” Hunk was suddenly between them, squinting at Keith. “What do you mean ‘Queen?’ Is this another Galraaaaa - Pidge, let - ow -!”

“Come on!” Pidge interrupted, dragging him toward the door with surprising strength. “I need your help with that project.”

“What project? And what about - ”

“The one we discussed earlier. Before Shiro gets back - come on!”

“Wait, now, I never agreed - ”

“You were uncomfortable,” Keith grunted, and Lance’s head snapped back from his retreating friends. “She already thinks I’m the Queen, I - I - ” Keith's face pinched in anger.  “No. Lance, you know what? You wouldn’t be in this situation if you didn’t flirt with every - every female we meet. Do you - you don’t even like her!”

“I - ” Lance squeaked. His mind grasped for a comeback but… Keith was right. “I don’t know!” he huffed instead. “I mean, how else would I - ?”

“How else what?” Keith prompted as Lance stared intently at the floor.

“I’m sorry!” he blurted out instead of answering. “I get it if you’re mad, but I didn’t mean to offend you! I’m just not used to the whole… Galra… thing, yet. I - it’s not an excuse, I know, and I’m not begging for like, forgiveness, I just - ”

“Lance…” Keith said slowly, “what are you talking about?”

Lance stopped babbling and blinked.

“I - I kept bringing it up, the Galra - there, I did again, shit - fuck - I. I dunno, you seemed upset, I thought - ”

“Are - are you talking about - on the training deck...?”

Lance nodded shallowly.

“Lance…” Keith breathed in an almost-laugh. “ _I’m_ not used to the... ‘Galra thing.’ You were asking questions _I_ didn’t know the answer to.”

“Oh.” Lance felt his face open into the wide look of epiphany. “I - Sorry, I - ”

“Stop apologizing, you were right. Sort of,” Keith muttered, and looked away.

“I - I was right? I mean, of course I was right. Um… what was I right about?”

“The - the Galra thing, it’s… kind of, it’s that, it’s… my, my ancestors - we’re the ones who hid Blue, the Blue Lion, on Earth, ten thousand years ago, the Galra - ”

“What? Yeah, I know - Kolivan told us  _that_ …”

“He told - he told _you_ that?”

“Well, yeah, Shiro…  kind of… made him? When you were, you know…”

Keith stared ahead, so still he barely blinked. “I can’t believe…” His voice was strained and his eyes were… shiny…. Lance felt a flutter of panic in his chest - was Keith crying…? He felt his hand drift over to Keith’s shoulder and rest there in an awkward gesture of comfort. Keith started and Lance jerked the hand back to hover at chest level, feeling small, but like he was under a microscope, his flaws and insecurities tagged with radioactive isotopes.

“You were right!” Keith lashed out, and Lance’s mind scrabbled for context. “About the mind reading, the Blue Lion,” he continued as Lance listened in blank panic. “I - I felt her first, I still - she puts me in your head, Lance, and I have _no_ idea why I’m with Red instead of her!”

“Wh - what?” said Lance weakly, recoiling a little, sinking into an emotional tar pit.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Don't…? What do you mean, you ‘don’t know??’ Keith, you - you just told me you and Blue… root around in my head on the regular and I? I think that deserves some explanation? You - you _can_ read my mind…?” Lance could feel his voice climbing in octaves as he spoke but couldn’t find the presence of mind to modulate it or to care while Keith was just silent in front of him, staring unresponsively at the ground. “Keith?”

“No,” he said finally.

“No? No what?”

“I can’t read minds, no.”

Lance felt a little bit of tension empty out through his lungs. Keith was leaning forward now, folded over his knees in an attempt to stare a hole through the floor.

“So, then… what? What are you talking about? You can’t just say something like that and then not… ”

But Keith was doubled over with his face buried in his hands. Hesitantly, Lance reached for him again: “Keith?”

“Shut up!” Keith snapped suddenly. Lance froze. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!”

Angry and shocked, Lance pulled back but didn’t leave. He just needed to find the words to explain to Keith how important this was, that he was ready to listen. But before he could think of anything to say, Keith stopped shaking.

“Just - ! Just give me a minute!”

“O - okay? I’m… sorry…?”

“No, you’re right,” Keith sighed deeply. “You deserve to know.”

Lance didn’t respond, but watched mutely as Keith collected his thoughts.

“When you found me in the training room,” said Keith, “I was talking to Red. I was asking her… pretty much what you asked me, only I didn’t know how - " Keith let that sentence tapper off and paused for several moments before abandoning it. "She understood anyway - " he continued, "but she didn’t explain before you came." Keith shook his head. “I didn’t know how to answer you, so I confronted Kolivan and Antok...”

_“I know that the Blade and the Blue Lion were on Earth.”_

“And when I found them” -

_“Keith?”_

\- “they were already talking to” -

_“Mom.You… she told me what happened, Kolivan. She - you hid Blue, on Earth, and now I can feel her. Why? She isn’t even my Lion. And why - why can I feel… people, too?”_

_“What do you mean she’s not your Lion?”_

_“At least we know you have been honest with us, Lorena. Keith: what more do you now know?”_

_“If I knew anything else, I wouldn’t still be asking questions!”_

_“He_ deserves  _to know, at least what he should have been told when he came of age. If you wanted to keep him in the dark, you should have left him alone like I wanted. You can’t have it both ways.”_

_“What is she talking about? Keep me in the dark about what?”_

_“Growing up under the protection of the Blue Lion, you are linked to her quintessence, Keith, and that is why you feel the link with your mother."_

“And… and me…” extrapolated Lance. Keith nodded.

“I still don’t really get it. Pidge said it’s… like gravity?” He looked helplessly at Lance who was shifting uncomfortably and staring back with wide, almost frightened eyes.

“Is - um. Can. Can you feel it now?”

Keith blinked wetly at him, was still and quiet for a moment.

“Yeah.”

Lance’s breathing was loud now, heavy and labored.

“Yeah? What do you see? When you’re in my head?”

“I don’t - I never really see anything. Just feelings. Usually bad ones. I mostly learned to tune them out, unless they’re very strong.”

“Feelings…?” Lance echoed breathily.

“Uh, yeah, like. Fear. Loneliness… despair.”

“Wow… real lizard brain shit…” Lance chuckled hollowly, tinny taste of panic still lingering in the back of his throat. Keith let out a small breath of frustration.

“I never… I didn’t even like…” he cringed. “It’s not like I wanted to be in your head, so I didn’t do it on purpose. I don’t usually… know things, like that, about… other people….” He trailed off with a pout, and wow, that was kind of cute, and now Lance may have been staring, but his mind was still reeling with…

“Uh, y - yeah, that’s what Shiro said…”

Keith growled. “What did Shiro say?”

“Uh, no! Nothing, he just… he said, it was hard for you… for… um, he said I should be more - genuine? - to you…” Lance paused, bringing his gaze up from Keith’s feet to his eyes.

They were dark and surprised under the sudden scrutiny and cast around uncertainly: unsure where to focus, not quite able to meet Lance’s gaze but not quite able to look away. His eyelids stuttered, and Lance’s heart stuttered with them.

“What?” Keith said stiffly. His head was getting closer and Lance realized with sudden horror that he had been leaning toward Keith.

“So, uh, I guess, I thought I should say, I don’t… hate you? Even with… you know…” Lance tapped the side of his head. If Keith was in there now, then...

“Yeah?” Keith’s eyes had found a place to focus but he wasn’t even trying to look Lance in the eye anymore. Lance frowned and - and in a split second the corners of Keith’s mouth turned down in an echo of that expression. Lance froze. He felt like a bath bomb had been dropped in his stomach because Keith still wasn’t making eye contact, so - so he must have been looking at Lance’s lips.

“Yeah,” Lance echoed back, mouth dry as the Arctic desert. For a moment, nothing happened, and Lance couldn’t tell if time had stopped or slowed or they had both just forgotten how to move....

BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEP

Lance screamed and jumped back two feet while Keith’s hands clapped to his ears. The front viewscreen was blinking red and Keith’s eyes were screwed shut. Footsteps echoed from down the hall. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith knows nothing about how insect colonies work - neither honey bees nor salamanders are 'monogamous,' so why should the Zzithlith be? (They're not.)
> 
> To be honest, I kind of got bored of working on the same chapter for weeks on end and impatient to publish it, so I'm not totally happy with how it turned out and I'm worried some parts are confusing. So... constructive criticism welcome. Appreciated even.
> 
> Happy holidays!


	8. Answer and Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith reviews some events from the previous chapter from his point of view, and Voltron has to fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a short chapter and a lot of it is flashbacks, so I'm sorry if it feels a little like a cop out u.u

*******

Discarding his armor in a heap by the training deck door Keith had stripped down to his boxers and t-shirt and taken off around the perimeter of the room. Sparring would take concentration that he didn’t want to spare, but he still needed to keep his limbs busy while he thought. The Blue Energy was there as always, a faint undercurrent beneath the slow churn of his brain processing.

As he ran the Energy had grown clearer, had dredged up certain thoughts, disjointed facts and theories, to the forefront of Keith’s mind, where he tacked lines of red string between them.

_ Being drawn to the desert… the Blue Energy… the blade, my mother, Lance… _

It made some sense that he could feel other Lions - other than Red - but…  _ but _ Lance _ isn’t a Lion _ , he told himself, trying to add up all his experiences. Despite the bond with Black, he’d never felt that kind of connection - that disturbing intrusion of emotion - with Shiro. Even when they formed, some barriers remained.

_ And my mom! She’s not a Lion, either; she’s not even a Paladin, she’s just…  _ Keith faltered and gave up, unable to fill in that blank. His feet pounded against the springy floor and sweat began to bead around his brow.

There his thoughts had been interrupted suddenly by a pouncing apparition of fiery concern. It was Red, mentally pinning him down and licking the confusing thoughts out of his head.

“Hey, I’m trying to think here,” Keith had muttered aloud to his Lion, but he could feel his muscles relaxing and his legs slowing to a more leisurely pace. 

And his questions were still there, but… all that confusion - about Blue, Lance, his mother - was congealing into a single, comprehensive question. It made so much sense in his mind, but he had felt sure that the moment he tried to put it to words he would lose it, and all its meaning, like a forgotten dream. 

So he held the question out and handed it to Red. She had released him, interest focused on the problem he had given her. Keith could feel her staring at him through the walls of the castle.

“Magic?” he whispered aloud to himself as a seed of understanding took root into the back of his mind. “Connected to Blue, connected to Lance, Mom, only…”

“Keith! Keith, what are you doing? Aren’t you, like, hurt?”   
  


Keith hadn’t known what to make of this second intrusion. It was Lance, expression pained and voice almost concerned, like he was trying to be Shiro. Lance wasn’t Shiro. 

Shiro didn’t start petty fights. Shiro didn’t make jokes Keith couldn’t understand, that made him feel like an asshole when he didn’t respond correctly. Didn’t barge in and scatter Keith’s thoughts with a string of questions Keith hadn’t answered - hadn’t even been able to put into words - for himself: What are you thinking about? Is that a Galra thing? Can you read minds?

Keith recognized that he was being hypocritical, considering all the time he’d spent unintentionally poking around inside Lance’s head. But just because he knew he was wrong didn’t mean he knew what to do about it. It was so much easier communicating things with Red, in pictures and feelings instead of words. 

The conversation had taken a turn he didn’t want, so he abandoned it - and Lance, who called vainly after him. Keith wanted to answer Lance’s questions, but first he’d need to find the answers for himself.

 

~

 

“I know that the Blade and the Blue Lion were on Earth.”

He’d found them in Antok’s quarters - bigger than Keith’s own, but dotted with stacks of particle barrier-railed hover beds, four, sometimes five high: the eerily empty but unmistakable evidence of a communal sleeping area that had once housed troops or servants, or prisoners…

Kolivan and Anotk stood facing away from the door, and when Keith entered to confront them, they leaned opposite directions to turn and look, parting like a curtain to reveal a smaller figure on a floating bed just in front of them.

“Keith?” Lorena was the only one to speak, and Keith went on without acknowledging her interruption.

“She told me what happened. You hid Blue, on Earth, and now I can feel her. Why? She isn’t even my Lion. And why - why can I feel…  _ people _ , too?”

“What do you mean she’s not your Lion?” his mother had asked, brow furrowed. Kolivan sighed.

“At least you have been honest, I see,” he said, looking back to Keith’s mom. Then he addressed Keith. “What more do you now know?”

“He deserves to know,” Lorena added, “at least what he should have been told when he came of age. If you wanted to keep him in the dark, you should have left him alone. You can’t have it both ways.”

“What’s the supposed to mean?” demanded Keith. Kolivan ignored that question to answer the first.

“Growing up under the protection of the Blue Lion, you are linked to her quintessence,” Kolivan said. “Each Lion commands a different element and a different force, and the Blue Lion’s domain is magic. That is why you feel the link with your mother.

_ And Lance _ , Keith thought. His mind flashed back to the glowing yellow substance that had touched and healed him at the Galactic Hub. He still didn’t fully understand, but…

“And my other question?” he prompted. “What did she mean, should have ‘left me alone’?”

The Galra exchanged looks, and Kolivan had just opened his mouth to speak when Keith’s mother jumped in.

“They took you,” she said bitterly. “Keith, I don’t know who raised you, but it was not your father. He had nothing to do with this mess.”

“What?” Keith breathed, eyes wide and hand hovering over the sheath at his belt. His head spun. “What do you mean…?” 

“We believed…” Kolivan explained, scrambling to salvage the situation, “once we learned the Blue Lion had not been destroyed, we believed the Terran Marmor… that one of your people was meant to pilot her.”

Keith was shaking. His eyes stung.

“But you - you doubted me from the beginning! You said - you  _ swore _ to me you had never been to Earth - ”

“I spoke the truth,” Kolivan replied. “I personally had never seen you before you entered our base.” Keith blinked back at him, mind struggling to process the information. He turned to Antok, who was still and guarded behind his mask.

“You?” - Antok looked down and Keith felt his jaw tighten - “You mean everything that happened - my whole life - that was you? That was your fault?” The dam over Keith’s face was cracking, leaking tears as he stared at the masked Galra before him.

“You were our last hope,” Antok said simply. Keith made a sound between a growl and a sob. He thought back to the way he’d been treated since first meeting the Marmorites, and now - from the very beginning? They’d been jerking him around like a marionette?

“I didn’t ask for… any… my life, my whole life, was it just a - your secret project, your… test?” I - if I’m… chosen, or whatever, to save the Universe? That’s fine. I accept - I  _ choose _ that, but you? I don’t want to be any part of your… sketchy cult, anymore.”

*******

 

Keith rubbed his fingers absently over the leather of his empty sheath. The ship’s alarm bled muffled through his hands and formed an chilly, monotonous soundtrack to his thoughts as they scanned over the last few minutes of his life.

_ Beep beeeep _

Lance’s eyes were large in his mind, electric but somehow cool, like a balm. The leak in the… in what was apparently some kind of metaphysical manifestation of his life, that might have been healed, maybe an hour ago now. But he felt like his whole life was still hanging from his body in tatters like the remains of Pidge’s cloaking suit, shreds of truths and fictions beyond repair.

But Lance’s eyes…

_ Beep beep beep _

Keith had never been good at reading people, but there were a few expressions he’d learned, through repetition or by necessity. This one, this look in Lance’s eyes, this was… this was one he recognized immediately and mirrored in the flushing of his face and the pleasant numbness of a sudden rush of heat blooming down the front of his spine to…

_ Beep bee---  _   
  


The sudden quiet was so jarring Keith jolted out of his headspace and back onto the bridge of the Castleship, where he was ashamed to find himself seated on the floor in front of his chair, knees tucked into his chest and hands plugging up his ears. He lowered his arms to his sides and stood up slowly, pants stretched tight over his lap as he moved. 

Lance glanced back as Keith settled himself carefully into his chair, and their eyes met for a brief moment before Keith ducked out of the gaze. The sensory memory of the last time their eyes had met flooded Keith’s face like a rush of adrenaline and blood. Keith had never been good at reading people, but that look in Lance’s eyes, he had recognized - that was  _ lust _ .

 

~

 

“We’re being pursued, but it’s not Galra!” Lance announced, still red, pointing at the screen, looking everywhere but Keith. Five space-dark ships were entering their space, gaining on them like a wave of dark photons. They had flashing red and white lights at the prows and were broadcasting a loud, high-pitched noise.

“Whoa!” Lance pouted, as Coran activated the ship’s particle barrier. “How come  _ they _ get a siren?”

“More importantly,” added Pidge, “how are they sending sound waves through a vacuum?”

“They’re not - you see, they’ve hijacked our shipwide broadcasting frequency,” answered Coran, muting the noise with a few keystrokes.    
Must have got it during our last encounter - these guys are Ghweeg!”

“I thought we shook them,” said Shiro.

“Are these the ones who were chasing you when you picked me up?” asked Keith.

“Oh yeah, that’s right, you weren’t around for that,” said Lance. “Basically they’re traffic cops. We broke the speed limit or something and now they’re out to get us.”

“There are speed limits in space?”

“Right? That’s what I said!”

“The odd thing is…” muttered Coran, fiddling with a few controls. “Ah-hah! Ahem… attention Ghweeg combatants: My maps indicate that you are out of your jurisdiction! You have no authority to enact Ghweeg law here!”

A shot was fired and absorbed by the particle barrier.

“Doesn’t seem like they’re ready to listen, Coran,” said Shiro, gripping the consul in front of his seat. “How long until Allura comes out of stasis?”

“Oh, not longer than an hour, I’d say!”

“Okay. We’re just going to have to hold them off until we can wormhole away.”

“Just what I was thinking!” cried Coran. “Now let’s get Lance and Keith out on those drones - ”

“I’d just like to point out that they’ve stopped shooting,” said Hunk, “So, uh, maybe we should hold off, too?”

“Coran?” said Shiro.

“Well, I suppose it’s possible I deterred them,” Coran mused. “The Ghweeg are pretty big on rules, at least when there are witnesses.”

Suddenly, a crescent-shaped Ghwig face appeared on their screen.

“Outlaws: surrender yourselves to us peacefully or we will hold you here until we can request your extradition to Ghweeg space.”

“What does that mean?” said Hunk, shivering.

“It means they’ll request the sovereign of this area to send us to their space, where they have jurisdiction to prosecute us,” explained Shiro. “At least, that’s what it means on Earth.”

“So who rules this area?” said Keith.

“Who rules 90% of the known universe?” replied Coran. “This is Galra space.”

 

~

 

They took Colleen’s car off the highway down a gravel road.

“The site should be here,” said Rosa, scanning the horizon. “Do you see any cave? Let’s park and look around.”

Colleen shook her head. “This is private property. I’m already on the Garrison’s shit list, and you may be, too. We can’t do anything incriminating.”

A small, whitewashed double-wide came into view.

“Oh! Should we tell them we are investigative journalists?” Rosa suggested, nodding toward the trailer home.

“I have a better idea,” Colleen replied, crunching to a stop just in front of the house. “Let me do the talking.”

Rosa sat in the passenger seat with the air blasting and watched as Colleen approached the house and knocked on the door.

A leather-skinned middle-aged person answered the door, exchanged a few words with Colleen, then retreated back into the house, shutting the door behind them. Rosa was just settling back into her seat when the door opened again and the owner reappeared with a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun resting in the crook of their elbow. Rosa scrambled to unfasten her seatbelt and fell out the door.

“Wai - wait!”

“You with the Garrison, too?” the owner growled. “Just hop back in your car and back off my property, we won’t have any problems.

“What did you tell them, Colleen?” Rosa exclaimed, freezing with her hands in the air. “We’re  _ not _ with the Garrison - we’re trying to  _ expose _ them! We just want to find our kids.”

“Get over here,” the person gestured with the gun. “Stand next to your friend, so I can keep an eye on the both of you. Then start talking.”

 

~

 

“Alright,” assessed Shiro. “New plan: we fight our way out and beat a hasty retreat before they get a chance to call for any Galra back-up.”

“And what if the Galra come before we get away?” said Hunk.

“Then we fight them, too,” Shiro replied. “We don’t have any good options. Everyone get to your Lions!”

The adrenaline of the moment kept Lance’s thoughts from running back over everything that had happened just before the alarm sounded, but he was aware enough to school it into a back corner of his mind as he boarded his Lion and shot out of her hangar. The five Ghweeg vessels had surrounded the Castle. They began firing on the Lions as soon as they appeared.

“Five-on-five,” laughed Lance. “Perfect odds.”

“No,” Shiro said. “If they’re contacting the Galra, we need to dispatch these ships as soon as possible and get away.”

“So… Voltron?” ventured Hunk.

“Voltron,” Shiro confirmed.   
  


Moments later they were towering above the ring of dark ships. Lance could almost feel Keith’s smirk through their link.

“This’ll be a piece of cake.”

“Let’s see if we can scare them off - Hunk, form shoulder cannon!”

“Aye, aye!” said Hunk, plugging in his bayard. Their huge blaster materialized over Voltron’s right shoulder, where Keith maneuvered it under Shiro’s direction.

“Don’t aim to hit them just yet,” he commanded. “Let’s fire a few warning blasts first.”

“What happened to taking them down and getting out of here?”

“They’re not Galra, Keith. We can’t just annihilate them.”

A twitch of frustration trickled through the link.

“Keith…”

“Yes, sir.”

Five bolts of yellow energy shot out of the canon in quick succession and zoomed between the enemy ships.

“Nice!” cheered Lance. But the ships didn’t move.

“Huh… maybe… we should just try flying away?” suggested Hunk as the Ghweeg continued to do nothing.

“Worth a shot,” conceded Shiro. “Engage thrusters.” 

As soon as the robot began to move out of the circle of its captors, two of the dark ships broke off and started circling around them slowly, while the other three remained posted in an equilateral triangle around the Castleship.

“Alright,” sighed Shiro. “Looks like we’re going to have to fight. Aim to destroy.”

“Keith, let me help you line up the shot,” Lance said.

“It’s not a precision weapon, Lance, I think I can hit them with a giant laser ball,” argued Keith, taking aim and firing the weapon as a ship circled around in front of them. At the last second the ship seemed to dart out of the line of fire. Keith growled.

“They’re too fast!” he complained. “Let me arm the sword, I can hit them with that!”

“Let me help you line up the shot!” Lance insisted.

“How?” Keith yelled back. “I’m the arm with the cannon on it, I have to take the shots!”

“Technically, it’s  _ my _ cannon,” put in Hunk, “maybe I should - ”

“Come on Keith! While we’re linked -  _ let me in _ . I’m sure I can help.” 

“Okay…” Keith relented finally. “Try it.”

Lance closed his eyes and used his body as a canvas to map out the physical components of Voltron. He moved hs awareness from his right leg up along his side to his arm, and he could feel Keith move a little closer in their five-way link.

“Can you see what I’m planning?”

“I see it,” said Shiro. “Keith?”

“Affirmative.”

“Okay,” said Lance, taking a deep breath, then opening his eyes to bring the enemy ships back into focus. “Now use my eyes!”

Keith leveled the blaster at one of the dark Ghweeg ships, following it with the barrel as it continued to circle slowly around them. The tip of the gun glowed with charging energy and, just before firing…

Lance and Keith jerked Voltron’s torso around and shot in the opposite direction. The second circling ship was caught off-guard and collided with the blast. It was sent hurtling back several yards then swallowed a ball of red and orange fire. All the remaining Ghweeg ships now turned on them and fired.

“Pidge!” said Shiro urgently.

“On it!”

The left arm rose to form the shield, but it could only protect them on one side at a time.

“Damnit!” cursed Lance. “How come the Castle and our Lions get full 360 forcefield coverage and all we get is a little kickboard glued to our arm? Who designed this thing?”

“Why, Voltron was designed by King Alfor himself! Well, and Zarkon. I remember - ”

“Coran,” Shiro said firmly. “We really need you on tactical support.”

“Right!”

“We tried Lance’s way, now let’s form the sword!” pushed Keith. “I can slice through these ships in no time, we need to get out of here before reinforcements arrive, remember?”

“Right,” agreed Shiro, but Lance interrupted again.

“No! Wait! I think my Lion is telling me something! I think I’m gonna unlock my Voltron weapon!”

“Then  _ do it _ !” said Keith, and Lance plunged his bayard into the glowing hollow next to his chair and turned it like a key.

 

~

 

Keith was angry at his body. Ever since he’d noticed Lance’s eyes and they way they were looking at him, he’d been sporting an uncomfortable stiffy, and being bonded as Voltron had not made it easier to get rid of or easier to hide. Lance was right there, metaphysically, and so was everyone else.

So he pressed his thumbs and waited for it to end, praying for a chance to rub one off before they were caught in their next predicament.

“We tried it Lance’s way, now let me form the sword!” he growled for like the third time in their short fight. Lance protested again, but this time everyone could feel why. There were waves of impatient power rolling off Voltron’s right leg, shaking with potential, waiting to be released.

“Then  _ do it _ !” Keith said coarsely, squinting under the sudden radiance of the Blue Energy. He could feel the tension as it pooled at the keyhole where Lance’s bayard connected with his Lion, the pop as it burst free and went cold.

Keith blinked, waiting, mind groping. There was a telescopic sight now in his viewscreen and a long slender barrel extended past the muzzle of the cannon. But the Blue Energy was gone.

“Great work, Lance!” congratulated Shiro, as if he couldn’t feel the sudden absence. Coran, we’re going to come behind the Castle and pick them off while you cover us.”

“Sounds good to me,” Coran acknowledged. Keith opened his mouth to protest, but could only make a noise of muffled confusion before Shiro was speaking again.

“Alright, Lance… Lance? We’re going to need your thrusters, too.” Radio silence. “Lance? Lance, do you copy?”

“What’s going on?” demanded Hunk.

“We lost Lance,” Shiro replied.

“Los - wait,  _ lost _ ? What does  _ lost  _ mean - ?”

“The link is gone,” said Keith.

“You’re right - I can’t feel Voltron’s right leg, or move it,” Shiro confirmed.

“Hunk,” Keith growled. “Can you get us closer? On your own?”

“No!” Hunk wailed. “I’m taking us back to the Castle! Something’s wrong with Lance!”

“If we’re caught here by Galra we won’t be able to do anything to help him, Hunk,” said Pidge, through gritted teeth. “And  _ he _ won’t be able to help us. I can already feel the bond eroding - we need to finish this, fast!”

Without waiting for orders, Keith pulled out his bayard and reached for his own Lion’s keyport.

“Paladins!” came Coran’s voice over the comms, and as if on cue - “Galra ships have been detected in the area, approaching fast!”

“Keith!” barked Shiro, “Sword!”

“I’m trying, but it won’t work! Lance’s bayard must still be plugged in!”

As Galra ships started to appear at the farthest visible distance, the four remaining Ghweeg vessels formed a square around Voltron and enclosed them in a forcefield.

“What are they doing?” said Pidge. As she spoke the Ghweeg began warping away from the Galra ships at break-neck speeds.

“The Castle!” cried Shiro as their ship disappeared behind them, struggling to match the Ghweeg vessels’ speed in chase. “Engage thrusters! We have to get back!”

“I’m thrusting as hard as I can!” said Hunk. “We’re not going to be able to break free without Lance! Lance? Come on, buddy! Lance!”

But the Blue Energy remained silent, and the Castleship disappeared from view, and Voltron crumbled into its component parts. The Blue Lion floated limply amid her companions, occasionally twitching as if in a nightmare.

 

*******

“I don’t want to be a part of your sketchy cult anymore!”

“Keith - !” his mother had interjected, but Kolivan spoke over her.

“Very well - then you relinquish your blade, and any right you have to our knowledge.”

Haltingly, Keith felt for the luxite dagger on his belt. He remembered how many times it had saved him on Lotor’s ship. How many more questions had been left unanswered, just how helpful the Castle’s library had been the last time he looked for those answers there… and then he tried to remember what he had done with his sword, because he couldn’t feel it on his person.

“I…” he began, twisting his torso look at his belt as his hands scrambled frantically over its pouches and loops. Mind reaching back, he turned abruptly to leave. When was the last time he had used the knife - he wasn’t sure he could even remember holding since he returned from Lotor’s ship. 

“Keith,” Kolivan had said gravely. “Where is your blade?”

“I must have left it with my armor…” he muttered, half to himself. But he couldn’t remember - the last time he could remember… 

“A Blade must keep his weapon on him at all times,” Kolivan was scolding, but Keith’s mind was in a memory - the smell of melting armor, the flash of his blade skidding across the ground...

Slowly, Keith turned around to face his mother, who was staring resolutely at the ground before her.

“No…” he said. “You had it last - mom?”

Apparently startled out of reverie by his words, Lorena had looked up with wide eyes, then sighed.

“Yes… the bay door,” she said simply. “It was locked and we needed to leave. The control panel was - ”

“Across the room,” Keith remembered, connecting the dots. Lotor’s magic charging behind them, the bay doors opening at the last minute for them to pass through.

“You threw my knife at the control panel?” he said, not sure why he was so angry when the move had saved their lives.

“I did the only thing I could. We barely escaped Lotor’s spell. If I hadn’t thrown the blade to open the doors…”

There had followed a heavy pause that dragged on several long seconds before Kolivan spoke.

“Nonetheless, you have put your people in danger. The luxite blade is our greatest secret, and now that it has fallen into the hands of an enemy and witch, I do not know what our next move can be. Come, Antok,” he said grimly, motioning for his subordinate to follow him out of the room. Keith and his mother had lingered awkwardly behind, silent, until at length Lorena spoke:

“Keith… which Lion do you pilot?”

“Red.” 

“Why?”

Keith’s temper boiled beneath his skin.

“She picked me? And Blue didn’t. It’s not like I got much say in the matter.”

Lorena nodded, but her face was twisted in confusion. 

“But you have such a connection with Blue - I just don’t understand.”

“Yeah, well,” Keith grumbled, “how do you think I feel?"

None of the revelations about his past had been as satisfying as he’d imagined. So he was linked to Blue’s quintessence - that didn’t mean anything to him. That didn’t really explain how he could feel his mom in his head from across Lotor’s whole ship, why all of Lance’s bad moods got funneled into his head like he was some kind of magnet for his teen angst. 

“I’m going to find Allura.”

******

 

It was a long journey - probably less than a varga in real time, but the anxious waiting the silence from Blue made it stretch.

Finally, In the distance loomed a conglomeration of small planets and large asteroids, closely orbiting what looked like a star the size of a moon. Their captors were making straight for it.

“I knew it,” groaned Hunk. “They’re going to toss us into the sun.”

But as they neared the too-small star, they realized that it was a ship, much like the one they had seen dying not a quintant earlier.

“Or they’re going to feed us to those web-monsters,” said Keith. Instead, they passed the corona of the ship unharmed and continued to dock at a pentagonal hangar. A fifth Ghweeg ship met them and drifted into formation, filling the fifth point of the pentagon. The forcefield that trapped the Lions extended to the polygonal bay door like an airlock made of light, and the door opened.

“Be ready to fight,” warned Shiro as the Lions were dragged in.


	9. The Price of Pardon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Paladins are captured by the Ghweeg and offered conditional pardon for their previous agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi I am lazy and in graduate school (bad combo), but this story is always on my mind. Here's a little "previously on..." for those of you who read the previous chapter seven months ago:  
> Team Voltron was on the way to a natural reserve of quintessence to heal Lorena and the Zzithlith from their encounter with Lotor's magic, when they were confronted by a small team of Ghweeg ships and accused of violating the terms of a deal they had struck to get out of a deadly speeding ticket. Eager to get on with their mission, the Paladins deployed to fight their way through these ships, only to have Lance become unresponsive in the middle of the fight. Voltron split, and the Lions were captured by the Ghweeg and whisked away, leaving the Castle to face Galra reinforcements the Ghweeg had called toward the beginning of the fight.
> 
> This chapter gets a LITTLE weird, in a metaphysical kind of a way, so........ hope it's not too much.

*******

“Luxite.”

Exceedingly rare. Thought to contain matter from the quintessential plane - though there was, of course, no conclusive evidence that plane contained anything but raw energy.

Lotor plucked the knife from his control panel with a flourish. His ship floated through dead space, incapacitated by his own magic, as his attendants conducted repairs. He was livid - at his father, his escaped prisoners, himself. This blade was a small stroke of luck that could deliver him a victory. One of only two good things to come out of the whole ordeal. The other was that his premature message of triumph had never reached Zarkon. He would rather be ignored than disgraced, again.

“If I can find out how this interferes with my magic,” Lotor boasted to himself, twirling the blade between thumb and forefinger, “I will become invincible.”

*******

 

“Lorena…”

She stood silent in a corridor leading away from the healing pods, staring in frozen horror at the disappearing figure of Voltron on the hallway screen. She wheeled on Kolivan when he spoke.

“This is _your_ fault, you and your… and Antok, _you_ put my boy in danger - ”

“I’m sorry, Lorena. We made… a great many mistakes, and many of our greatest achievements were borne on your - on sacrifices your people did not agree to make.”

Lorena turned her red rimmed eyes back to the now-empty screen and did not answer. But Kolivan seemed to have something more to say, so after a moment’s tense silence he tried again.  
“Lorena, your anger at us is earned, but we do not want your sacrificed to be in vain. Therefore you _must_ tell us what secrets you might have shared in your despair. It is imperative we - ”

"I already told you."

"You told us what you shared with Keith. That is not what we most needed to know."

“They asked about you,” Lorena said at length.

“He asked - ? What information did he already have?” Kolivan prompted in alarm. Lorena laughed bitterly.

“They knew… something…” she said cryptically. “I didn’t have much to add to their intelligence, and anyway - they were more interested in us.”

“‘Us?’ The prisoners? What was his interest in you?”

“They wanted to know what we could do. How were we different from… natural humans, what _were_ we - an asset? Threat?” She let the stillness between them marinate in those words for a long minute, then Kolivan spoke:

“On your own planet,” he said in understanding, “You are referring to your captivity on Earth.” Lorena’s silence was her confirmation. Kolivan continued, “And Lotor?”

“Lotor knew nothing - nothing that he let on.”

 

~

 

Blue, yellow, and white light flooded through into the cockpit. Shiro toggled a few controls, but his Lion was unresponsive. So he stumbled out of her mouth, Galra hand raised, and blinked as his eyes adjusted to the bright interior of the sunship. His three conscious teammates were soon to follow - Keith with his bayard out, Pidge with her eyes wide, Hunk making a beeline for the still form of Lance’s Lion.

Behind them, the amber-tinted abyss of space shrunk to nothing as an airlock door wooshed shut. A second door opened in front of them, revealing the rest of the ship.

There were no hallways or corridors, only a grand glass-and-gold atrium filled with colored plants and singing creatures that darted like birds around its expansive dome. Shiro stepped forward in wary wonder, resting a hand on Pidge’s shoulder to hold her back.

No sooner had he crossed the threshold between airlock and ship than a sun-bright saffron throne surrounded by four attendants appeared before them. In the throne sat a particularly pearlescent Ghwig. The tapered tips of its sickle-shaped head bowed like the horns of an ox, but the rest of its body was segmented and shrimplike, draped over its golden chair. Every move the Ghwig made sparkled with gemstones and crystal lights set like little stars in the pale plates of its exoskeleton. Shiro took another step forward, hand at chest level but not yet activated. The seated Ghwig spoke.

“Paladins of Voltron,” it said. “By the power vested in me as Interplanetary Etheregent of the Ghweeg Protectorate, I offer you conditional pardon for your crimes against our State.”

“If you care about Voltron and our mission at all, you’ll free us immediately,” Shiro replied. “One of our team members may be injured, and our allies were left alone to face Galra reinforcements that _your_ officers called!”

“Then perhaps you will be doubly motivated to meet the conditions of your pardon: we ask only that you rid our quadrant, our “protectorate,” of its Galra presence and free us from servitude. Is that not already the mission of Voltron, to free all subjugated peoples and rid the known universe of the Galra scourge?”

“Our mission is to bring peace and freedom to _all_ worlds,” answered Shiro. “There were rescued prisoners on our ship! And we can’t form Voltron without our Blue Paladin.” He gestured to Lance’s prone Lion, where Hunk was wringing his hands and calling for his friend.

“Yeah,” he piped up in high voice, eyes flitting between the Etheregent and the Blue Lion. “And also… like I could be wrong about this, but shouldn’t he be dead? I mean that’s what they, the Ghweegs or whatever who stopped us the first time? They said we were trespassing on the, uh, “Interplanetary Etheregent’s” funeral procession, right?”

The Etheregent ignored the question for a moment, appearing to count the prisoners before him before turning to stare impassively at the Blue Lion.

“The mantle of Etheregent passed to me that day. So must we now find a successor to carry the mantle of the Blue Paladin.”

“What?” cried Hunk. Keith snapped,

“No! It has to be him!”

Suddenly, the mouth of Blue Lion dropped open.

“Lance!” Hunk wept for joy, scrambling in to pull his friend out. Across the room Keith groaned, and held a hand to his head. The Etheregent’s attention turned to Lance as he emerged, draped unconscious across Hunk’s broad shoulders and forearms, features pale and spasming feebly as if caught in the throes of a fever dream.

“Incredible…” breathed the Etheregent, callous to its prisoners’ concern. “This creature has been in quintessential space.”

But at this Pidge perked up, and Shiro felt her shoulder muscles tense under the gentle press of his hand.

“Like… the quintessential plane? Where... magic... comes from?” she said slowly, eyebrows arched in fascination.

“The higher space from which quintessence derives,” said the Etheregent. “Your Lions derive from that same space.”

“So like he’s gonna be okay, or…?” Hunk said shakily, still cradling his friend.

The Etheregent continued to study Lance intently.

“We can help him,” it said finally, “but you must help us. We have given you a generous path to exoneration, one that falls in line with your own mission.”

“We can’t take down the Galra without Voltron, and we can’t form Voltron without Lance!” Keith argued. “By the time he’s recovered and we’ve finished taking care of your problem, it’ll be too late to save _our_ friends!”

The Etheregent was silent and unmoving. Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” he said finally. “Pidge, Keith, and I will go on a reconnaissance mission to learn what we can about Galra control in the region. Hunk, you stay here and keep an eye on Lance - _just in case_.”

“No,” said the Etheregent.

“Excuse me?” Shiro replied.

“Leave the Red One. It has some link to the magic.”

Shiro was silent for a long moment before agreeing:

“Fine. But if we ever meet again, remember what we did for you.”

“I am sure that I will.”

 

~

 

They wouldn’t let Pidge take the Green Lion so Shiro ended up piloting an obsidian Ghweeg ship to the main Galra outpost a couple of light minutes away. The ship’s black hole drive made quick work of that distance - quicker even than the Lions could do without wormholing - so it wasn’t a terrible disadvantage. They were out of their element and separated from their Lions, but at least they were fast and they blended in.

“Alright, team, listen up,” Shiro addressed his two teammates as their ship slowed and the outpost came into view. “Our first priority is to find out what happened to the Castle. If we somehow can reconnect with Allura and Coran, we may be able to launch as surprise attack on the Ghweeg and get out with Lance, Keith, and the Lions. Second priority is intel. If we do end up having to take down this whole command center, we’re going to need a plan.”

“Right, so… what do you want me to do?” said Hunk.

“What do you mean?” said Shiro. “As I just said - ”

“Yeah… yeah I got that, and I assume Pidge is gonna hack into the computer and, you know, see if they’ve picked anyone up, and you’re gonna sneak around with your Galra arm and take people out, right?”

“Well, yeah, probably something like - ”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Well, you’re going to have to stay with the ship.”

“Oh thank god. Yep, I can do that.”

“Good. If you’re hailed your first tack is diplomacy - this is a Ghweeg ship after all - but see if you can figure out the weapons and defense systems, just in case.

“Roger that!” Hunk replied, voice wavering only a little.

“Now take the helm - this is where Pidge and I exit.”

 

~

 

Keith watched every movement with wary eyes. Attendants laid Lance on a pallet of light, where he floated, serene save the occasional spasm.

“So? Wake him up,” he urged impatiently, reaching out to pinch Lance’s arm. The Etheregent watched silently as Lance jumped at the contact.

“No,” it said finally. “You have to call him back.”

“I thought you said _you_ could help him,” Keith accused, but the Ghwig didn’t react. So he turned back to Lance and sighed.

“Hey…” he began. “Hey. Lance. Wake up.”

Nothing.

“Come on!” he continued, a little more forcefully. “Wake up! Are you listening to me? Wake up, Lance, it’s Keith!”

Finally he leaned forward to grip Lance’s shoulders and shout,

“I _said_ wake _up_!” punctuating each word with a violent shake. Lance groaned and Keith growled. He closed his eyes and reached out, groping for any wisp or whisper of the Blue Energy. He looked around him. He looked inside.

 

Keith’s world had been so small until recently. It barely extended past his own head, and other people were, for the most part, ciphers he didn’t have the knowledge or energy to solve. Chasing the Blue Energy around his pocket of desert had been like following a thread of light deeper into his own rich mind, but now that singular focus had expanded like a whole universe around the tiny terrarium of his former life. Keith’s world was now overwhelmingly vast and strange, large beyond comprehension. Out of all the wild and wonderful things that now filled it, the most disturbing was this capacity to dip in and out of another person’s mind. It shook the scaffolding of his own inner world, and that was uncomfortable but alarmingly addictive. He found the tendril of that energy twisting like a root through his own being. He grabbed it and pulled.

 

“Gah!”

Lance was grasping at the air, arm impossibly long as he stared forward with a look of blank panic.

“Ma!” He bolted upright, “mom!”, cried out in a moment of lucid urgency before collapsing forward and grabbing his head.

“Lance?” said Keith, awkwardly gripping his forearm. “They’re on Earth - Lance, do you remember where you are?” It occurred to Keith even as he asked that he didn’t exactly know where they were. Lance didn’t seem to have heard him anyway.

“Earth? ...Earth!” he moaned. “We have to get to Earth!”

The Etheregent stared, and Keith felt helpless and invisible under its scrutiny.

“You have Seen,” it said to Lance.

“Yeah, I saw Earth, she needs us, let’s _go_ !” he snapped. Then his eyes seemed to focus, widened a little as he took in the Etheregent, the interior of the sunship. “Wait, where - where _am_ I?” he murmured, then more forcefully to the Ghweeg: “Where’s my team?”

Keith cleared his throat.

“They’re… on a mission. The Ghweeg captured us… you passed out.”

“No, I… I was on Earth,” Lance insisted. “I swear! You didn’t feel how real - ”

“Lance,” Keith said calmly. “I’ve been under illusions that felt…” he swallowed, remembering his own unconscious encounter with his family, with Earth, in the Blade of Marmora headquarters. “I know what that feels like, but you have to consider the possibility that it was just…”

“No! Shiro knew when his memories were real and I know what I saw was real, too!”

Keith scowled, but didn’t have anything to say to that. Instead he addressed the Etheregent, who was still studying Lance with great interest.

“You said before - you said he was on the quintessential plane. What does that _mean_?”

“Like your green friend said,” the Etheregent answered, not taking its gaze off Lance, “quintessential space is the origin of magic. We say that magic can create or destroy energy, against the laws of physics, but that’s not quite the case. Rather, it can draw it from or banish it to quintessential space. Those who can See - ” the Etheregent leaned toward Lance. “ - can look down from that space at any area of our own.”

“So it was real!” cried Lance.

“Maybe,” said the Etheregent. “There is another possibility. It is rare, but… there is a higher realm whence can perceived any area of space - or time. It is said some ancient Alteans had the skill to enter it.” The Ghwig nodded to Lance, who finally met its gaze. “It is also said that their greatest weapon originated from this space.”

“So the quintessential plane,” Keith clarified, frowning in confusion. “You said the Lions came from there - right?”

The Etheregent shook its head. “The Lions yes. But like all lifeforms, your Voltron is greater than the sum of its parts. Tell me, Paladin… have you ever entered the ethereal realm before?”

“No?” Lance replied. “I don’t… how do I know? What’s real and what’s….”

“It’s all _real_ ,” the Etheregent explained. “It’s just… seeing more of reality than you normally see.”

“Like - like looking through a wall?”

“Seeing through solid objects is something that can happen to those in quintessential space.”

“What about… reading people’s minds?” He glanced at Keith, who frowned and studied the ground.

“That’s not so straightforward, now is it?” the Etheregent mused. “It’s not uncommon to be able to feel another’s quintessence, to know their temperment. That is possible for those even with little to no capacity for magic.”

“Hmm…. But, wait, so... you think I… do? I have, you know, magic…?”

“It would be impossible for you to enter the ethereal plane if you had no aptitude.”

“You said Voltron did that,” Keith reminded the Ghwig, eyes serious and searching.

“Yes… Voltron acted as a bridge, I would guess. Exposure to quintessence can unlock magical abilities. It is possible that the confrontation with our officers triggered your Vision.”

“We’ve fought hundreds of enemies,” Keith countered, leaning an inch closer to Lance. “Why would fighting _your_ goons be an out of body experience?”

“The Ghweeg Protectorate,” the Etheregent answered slowly, “has a close connection with quintessential space.”

“Then why am I not… having another vision, or whatever? Like now?” said Lance voice prickling with desperation.

The Ghweeg’s attention returned to Lance, but it offered no reply, so Keith watched warily as it reached forward to touch Lance’s head. His fingers twitched, restless, around his deactivated bayard.

 

~

 

“It’s not the first time something like this has happened…”

The afternoon sun drifted lazily through the dusty windows of the double-wide. A clear pitcher of dark liquid resting on the windowsill cast a watery amber glow across Colleen’s breast as she entered. It rippled over dusky walls when the pitcher was plucked down and brought to the table. The little home’s stocky owner began filling three mason jars with sun tea.

“Sorry for the cold welcome - not much good has ever come to my kind from yours.”

Colleen and Rosa joined their host at a small table of unstained oak.

“My name is Almez, by the way.”

Almez took a long gulp of sun tea then looked at them across the table for several moments with curious eyes. Colleen cleared her throat.

“Oh… no… it was us who were too trusting. You were right to be suspicious.”

“What kind is ‘our kind’?” Rosa said. Colleen winced, taken aback by the straightforwardness. Almez just shrugged shallowly and gestured at them.

“You know, _others_ \- no offense. Just, not us. Not our kind. Extranjeros.”

Rosa leaned forward, voice dropping as she continued, “And what is _your_ kind?”

Almez’s fingers tapped a thoughtful pattern into their mason jar. Colleen sipped from her own. The infusion was bittersweet and a little toasty, but it wasn’t… _tea_ tea, she thought.

“It was more than ten years ago now it happened. I grew up in this desert, believing in the protection of la Pantera. And when she woke up - was it really? Puta madre, almost twenty years ago she woke up. We knew because we started to hear things - voices - we didn’t know what they were saying at first, but they were scared.”

“Asking for help,” Colleen inferred, remembering the crumpled cipher she had pulled out of Katie’s backpack at the beginning of this strange journey. “Asking the Blue Panther for help?”

“No…” said Almez slowly, considering. “Asking anyone. La Pantera sent them to us, like we were supposed to do something about it. We did: we went to the U.S. government, but of course they called us ‘crazy,’ said that we’re - ”

“A ‘cult,’” said Rosa, staring into her untouched glass as if she could ice the sun-warmed tisane with her eyes. Almez’s face darkened.

“That was your Garrison that spread that lie. The government wasn’t listening but the Garrison tried to silence us anyway. I think they knew something they didn’t want the government to know.”

“That must have been about the time they started taking military contracts,” Colleen recalled. “Sam… my husband had just taken a job, but they were still a private company then.” She turned her gaze down to the surface of the table. “I - I mean… we didn’t _like_ that, we needed the money and I couldn’t work yet, my - my son was too young. Sam was never involved in the military side of… he was only ever interested in the science…”

“Your husband wasn’t the first person to disappear at the hands of your Garrison, and it seems he wasn’t the last. I am sorry for your loss, but at least now you are listening. It’s a shame this is what it took for any outsiders to learn what happened.

 

~

 

“Then why am I not… having another vision, or whatever?”

There was turmoil in the human’s question - anxiety over what he had just Seen, suspicion of every fantasy, daydream, thought, or fear he had ever had before.

“I don’t know,” the Etheregent lied softly. “Would you like to?”

“I - I dunno….”

It was searching - with tempting and untapped power - for the whisper of its own present or future, some millions of lightyears away.

“I can help you learn the difference.”

The Etheregent stared at its own amber-aureoled reflection in the Paladin’s eyes, which scanned only briefly to where his companion stood grey and silent outside the halo of the Etheregent’s quintessence, before he assented with a thought.

 

The biped’s mind was faceted and brilliant as a sapphire when it unfurled, eclipse-dark, over the sunglow of the atrium, each fold a prism refracting that light into a hundred prospective futures, a thousand abandoned pasts.

The Etheregent steered Paladin’s errant thoughts to its own pocket of space.

The jewel tone kaleidoscope of a vast nebula flickered and spread over the dark facets of the Blue Paladin’s mind like ripples disturbing the water of some untouched lake, formed under the steady drip of years into millennia into aeons of oblivion. Lights sprung up as distant nodes of the stellar nursery collapsed under their own beauty, and wove a net of diamonds around the black limbo of empty space. But the dust here did not settle or implode into spheres of self-sustaining flame, and the unbroken surface of the time-lake was an inkstain in the silver-flecked sky.

Then like skipping stones the ships came in, flakes of obsidian, exiled to the void, towing furnaces of their own.

Heavy Galra vessels came and went among the fire of the synthetic stars. They came empty and went with holds full of light. Smooth globes of raw obsidian circled the sunships in perfect orbits, unperturbed. Their little stars waxed and waned.

Waxed and waned.

And waned.

And waned.

Then one by one, they flared, and went dark.

Like flies to a dying animal the Weblings came, dark bodies a plague of darkness blotting out the fading lights - until those lights were towed away and left to drown in the void that was slowing closing in around the little oasis.

The Galra ships came and went.

The present moment came and went.

And with alarming immediacy thereafter, a familiar orb of glowing life began to lose its luster. The Etheregent watched its own sunship die and despaired at the imminence of this fate. They were running out of time.

Reversing the flow of time with surprising ease, the Etheregent searched for hope, for a way out, for the Paladins who had had grudgingly set out to save the Ghweeg from extinction.

But a sudden jolt of pain cut through its concentration and brought it reeling into the the chaos of a reality the vision had not Shown.

 

~

 

Hunk snuck the obsidian ship right up to the Galra base’s back door. In addition to being functionally invisible, it had apparently been fitted with sensor blocking signal jammers. So Shiro and Pidge slipped undetected into a little-used entrance and made their way toward to the center of the ship, where the mainframe ought to be. Shiro led them around the sentries’ patrol paths, and despite Keith’s warnings about the variation he had encountered on Lotor’s vessel, there seemed to be no deviations from the usual pattern on this base.

“Alright, Shiro,” Pidge said when they reached the central computer, “I’m gonna need your arm.”

“Now hold on,” said Shiro, palm floating hesitantly over the control panel. “The last time we tried this on an occupied base - ”

“Oh, we don’t have to worry about that anymore!” exclaimed Pidge, fidgeting with excitement and pride. “Hunk and I removed the identification tag. It’s totally safe!”

“You… Pidge how… when did - ”

“Put ‘er here!” Pidge insisted brightly, gesturing at the Galra handprint. Shiro sighed but reluctantly obliged. The computer woke up, asking for credentials.

“Okay, I’ve got it from here,” Pidge said, fingers gliding over the keyboard. “And… we’re in! What do you say we take a look at these personnel records and see exactly how many on-site Galra we’re - ”

Shiro’s left hand connected with the crown of Pidge’s head and knocked her back on her rump, just in time for a laser to whiz over her head to catch Shiro in the shoulder.

“Shiro!” she gasped. “But my hacking - your arm, I’m sure I - ”

“Don’t worry about that now,” Shiro groaned. He reached for his injury but his Galra arm was active and waiting to fight. Pidge whipped her bayard up into a defensive position and surveyed their surroundings. It was impossible to say how many sentries were pouring into the room, and they hadn’t even gotten any useful information off the database yet. Shiro’s injury didn’t look serious, but if he had to neutralize this threat himself, it wasn’t going to get any better. Eventually, he would need medical attention, and he would probably need Pidge’s help to cut through the wall of sentries to reach it. They needed someone with range.

With an exasperated sigh, Pidge extended the whip of her weapon and sent an electric shock through a line of sentries in her path.

“Come on, Shiro, let’s get out of here!”

“No,” Shiro said firmly through gritted teeth. “We need information. We have to take down this base before the Galra capture the Castleship and figure out what it is they have. We can’t afford to stand down yet.”

“We’ve been compromised! We need to regroup - whatever we find won’t be any use to us in a Galra prison!”

“Which is exactly why we need to get to our allies as soon as possible!” Shiro reiterated. “Can you make a copy of the hard drive?”

“I… I mean, yes, but it’ll take time…”

“I can give you that!”

With a grunt of exertion Shiro vaulted over the computer consul, leaving a drop of blood on its input display.

“Fuck,” muttered Pidge, getting to work. She was engrossed in editing redundant space-wasting info out of the hard drive copy in real time when a sentry went soaring over her head and exploded against the wall behind her. Pidge started and looked up.

“Careful, Shiro, I’m over here remember?” she yelped. But Shiro was still and watching in unmasked surprise as another figure made quick work of the Galra sentries surrounding it. Pidge squinted, pushing her glasses up her nose, trying to make out the shape. It was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it until the wall of robots surrounding it crumbled to the floor of the ship.

“What - ” she began, confused and wary of a trick. The figure turned to look her directly in the eyes. “No - no way!”

 

~

 

Lance writhed on the pallet of light.

“What are you doing to him?” Keith grunted. “Hey… hey! - you’re hurting him!” The Etheregent did not answer or even acknowledge him. When he stepped forward to intervene, the king’s attendants moved swiftly to block his path. Growling, Keith drew his bayard and issued a warning glare. In unison the attendants produced glowing weapons of strange shape and indeterminable function. Keith gripped the red sword in his left hand and reached for the luxite knife with his right - but of course, it wasn’t there.

“Hey!” he demanded again, gripping his blade with both hands. “What’s happening to Lance? Answer me or - hah!”

Keith dodged a spinning projectile of yellow energy and swung at the offending Ghwig. His sword sparked against its armored shell - which it didn’t pierce - and sent the attendant flying into a golden pillar. Behind Keith the Ghweeg weapon arched around like a boomerang and whipped back toward its owner, clipping him in the face as it returned.

Keith breathed heavily, swallowing a grunt of pain, and whirled around to face the Etheregent again.

“Let him go!” he demanded, making another swipe at it. Another attendant stepped in to protect its ruler, but Keith thrust his sword between two segments of the Ghwig’s exoskeleton and pushed it out of the way. The blade came out dripping dark blue. Lance screamed. Keith pivoted toward the sound in alarm, letting his sword fall to hip height and absently thumbing away a pearl of blood from the scratch on his cheek.

The third attendant took the opportunity to send whip of white-hot gamma radiation slashing towards Keith’s neck and chest. The wave cleared the top of his bayard as he scrambled to raise it in defense.

Suddenly, the steel grey streak of a hurled weapon cut through the air inches from Keith’s breastplate, and the gamma whip flickered and fizzled out. The embers of a gash it had begun to carve in Keith’s armor faded to ash, and the broad luxite blade of a familiar sword quivered where it had lodged in a pillar a few feet away.

The light of the atrium began to dim.

“No!” cried the Etheregent, eyes coming to focus on its surroundings. Lance contorted and whined in echo of its panic. “No - what have you done?”

 

*******

“They’ve taken Voltron!” Coran shouted to no one in particular. Lorena and the Marmorites were nowhere to be found; the Zzithlith were now scuttling around the bridge in a most unhelpful panic. “After them!” Coran continued, still mostly to himself, as he punch the ship up to maximum speed and hurtled in the direction the Ghweeg had fled.

Laser shots began battering the particle shield behind him, causing the Castle to swerve on its course. The Galra reinforcements were closing in.

“Quiznak,” Coran cursed under his breath. A Galra battle cruiser loomed before him.

Alarms blared for the second time in as many vargas, echoing this time through empty corridors. Coran punched the ship-wide intercom and barked in the direction of the microphone,

“Attention passengers, this is your… um, captain, I suppose… anyway, if you’re not too busy, I could use all hands on deck! Voltron has been captured and we’re surrounded by Galra, so - ” with a jerk he steered the Castleship out of the path of a blast of purple light - “so I could use a little help!”

Coran ended the ship-wide transmission and turned his full attention to the battle brewing just outside their castle walls. Twitching with anticipation, his fingers curled stiffly over the holographic steering controls. There was one battle cruiser - so far - directly in front of them, and several smaller ships circling around to pen them in.

The Galra had stopped firing but were not contacting them. Coran suspected that they had guessed who they were facing, and that their hesitation belied uncertainty regarding the whereabouts of their Ghweeg subjects or of Voltron. It would only be a matter of seconds before the cruiser activated its tractor beam regardless, and those seconds would mean the difference between capture and escape.

With a deep breath in, Coran dropped his fingers to the controls. With a flick of his wrist he lowered the ship’s shields for a split second and directed all power to the front laser. The blast sliced across several offensive fixtures on the front of the battlecruiser then cut a path through the circle of smaller ships cutting them off from escape. With one hand Coran restored the particle barrier; with the other he sped the ship forward, toward the battlecruiser. As soon as the shield sprang back into place, he used both hands to channel the momentum of his forward charge into a sudden, tight turn into the hole he’d just cut in the Galra blockade.

Little Galra vessels were already rushing to fill the opening, and Coran could feel a weapon charging on the battlecruiser that was now behind him. Gritting his teeth, Coran punched up the speed, ignoring a bead of nervous sweat forming on his brow. His left pinky finger tore itself free of the deathgrip he had adopted around the empty air where his controls were projected, fanning out to hover, quivering, over the laser trigger. Thin purple energy beams battered the particle barrier. The ship could withstand this barrage, but if it were to collide with the reforming barricade of Galra craft or suffer a blast from any of the battle cruiser’s arsenal…

A drop of lead hit the pit of Coran’s stomach and he couldn’t shake the sense of despair. He jabbed the intercom button with his elbow and made a second, perhaps his last, shipwide broadcast with a slightly shaky voice.

“Attention guests and passengers. In the face of imminent capture and likely death, it is my duty to inform you that escape pods are located in the adjacent to each of the Lion hangers and will support approximately 3-5 lifeform each - ”

“Coran - ” came a deep, urgent reply.

“Seatbelts in each pod can be fastened by inserting the metal end into the buckle - ”

“Coran, listen!”

“- hold on, I’m in the middle of a safety announcement - and pull the strap to tighten - ”

“Coran! It’s the Princess!”

“- your seat-back in the full upright - wait, what about Allura?”

“She’s emerging from cryostasis.”

“Wha - why didn’t you tell me! Get her to the bridge!” Coran nearly popped a blood vessel as he rolled the ship to the left, barely dodging another cannon blast. “Double-quick!”

Like the waxing of a dark moon, a wormhole opened in the empty space directly ahead of them. Coran gunned for it.

“That was at least quintuple-quick,”  he remarked with cheerful relief as the nose of the ship slipped past the rim of the portal. “Glad to have you back with us, Prin - eh?”

The bridge behind him was empty.

“Allura…?”

Silence.

Gulping loudly, Coran turned around in time to see the Galra host disappearing behind the shrinking pinhole of the wormhole’s entry point on the rearview screen.

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almez's tea is yaupon, a caffeinated plant native to Texas.


	10. Friends Unlooked For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lorena wants to infiltrate the sunship where the Paladins are being held as soon as they find it. Pidge finds something at the Galra headquarters that might help them reach a diplomatic solution instead. Nothing goes the way anyone planned it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously on this fic.......  
> Allura was in cryosleep after overextending herself to heal Keith's mom and the other prisoners rescued from Lotor's ship. While she was out, five police ships from the Ghweeg Protectorate showed up to take the Castleship in for breaking a promise to stay out of Ghweeg space. When the Ghweeg ships called for Galra reinforcements, Voltron was deployed to neutralize them so the Castle could escape before the Galra arrived. Before Voltron could complete this task, Lance became unresponsive, causing the robot to break into its component Lions, which were captured and taken by the Ghweeg.   
> The captured Paladins were offered the chance to expunge their records by riding the region of its Galra presence, so Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro left to scout out a nearby Galra headquarters. They were in the middle of a fight with several sentries when Pidge saw something that surprised her...  
> Back at the sunship, the Etheregent of the Ghweeg offered to help Lance. But when the Etheregent appeared to be hurting Lance instead, Keith threw caution to the wind and attacked...  
> Meanwhile, Coran was overcome by the Galra reinforcements while giving chase in the Castle. As he tried to fight his way out, Allura finished healing and the Castle wormholed away from the onslaught. However, when Coran turned around to thank Allura for saving them, he found that she had not yet made it to the bridge............

*******

The familiar cool of the cryopod closed around her and Allura fought a small surge of panic as her consciousness slipped away - would all her friends still be there when she woke up? What year would it be - what millenium? The thoughts faded into troubled dreams.

*******

 

Allura felt the wormhole jump as she hurried to the bridge, skin prickling under the translucent body suit she hadn’t taken the time yet to change out of. Her mind was already reeling from the brief artificial sleep, and now her vision was overcome with a mist of sparkling static. Reflex caught her when she stumbled, so that when her vision cleared she was half-squatting, bent over her knees with a white-knuckled hand flat across the castle wall, gripping onto its texture with the skin of her tense fingers.

“Princess!” Kolivan was urging. Allura pushed off the wall and continued down the hall before he could touch her to help.

 

“What is happening, Coran?” she demanded as she finally staggered onto the bridge. 

“Um, yes, well…” Coran replied unhelpfully, “we appear to have wormholed?”

“Yes, but how?” Another starburst of static was clearing from Allura’s eyes, just in time to see the ship slip out the other end of the wormhole and land amid a colony of tiny, close-packed stars. With her right hand she waved away a proffered arm - Kolivan’s or Lorena’s - and with her left supported herself against her waist just above the hip. “Coran… Coran how long have I been suspended? Where are we?”

“Just for a few very eventful vargas, princess,” Coran tried to assured her, but Allura frowned doubtfully at that. “And if I didn’t know better - which, in all likelihood, I don’t - I would say we were smack in the middle of the Ghweeg Regency!”

“The Ghweeg Protectorate,” Kolivan corrected. “They traded their freedom centuries ago for protection under Zarkon’s empire.”

“Yes - right, well. Either way - ”

“The Lions,” said Allura suddenly. “They’re not - where are my Paladins?”

“Princess,” Lorena spoke softly, pointing at the viewscreen. “There.”

Allura followed the tip of her pointing finger to the screen. There seemed almost to be a frail tendril of blue light sprouting from Lorena’s fingertip toward one of the small stars. Haloed in a ring of obsidian planets and their atmospheres the star twinkled and winked.

“Where?” said Coran, leaning forward to squint at the screen.

“In the sunship?” Allura said, ascending to her raised platform at the center of the bridge. She put out a hand to summon her controls, but they were already activated and waiting, cooling down after the recent wormhole. A feeling of troubled curiosity sank in her gut and pulled down at the corners of her mouth. She let her hand hover over the top of one pillar, sensing out the strange but familiar energy that was dissipating slowly from the air around her. When finally she tested the controls on one pillar with a tap of her palm, she recoiled, electrified by with a rush of the residual quintessence. With a deepening frown, she carefully returned her hand to the pillar, splaying it curiously over control at the top. It felt like… 

“The Blue Lion, at least, is there,” confirmed Lorena, still pointing to the star, “and Keith.”

Allura frowned at her hand for another moment before looking up to stare probingly at the radiant globe at the tip of Lorena’s finger.

“Yes,” she said finally. “I think you’re right.”

 

~

 

The stars were magic, Lorena recognized immediately, almost pure quintessence - like the dying ship they had seen amid the Webling swarm, but hot and strong. Red, yellow, white… blue. 

Of course her shipmates thought it would be worth the time it took them to make a plan - they were probably right, but Lorena’s hand twitched by the hilt of the Altean blade she had appropriated from the ship’s armory. 

“Infiltration is the Blade’s specialty,” she argued. “Let us go in while we still have the element of surprise.”

“You know better than anyone the consequences of risking an extraction you are not prepared to pull off,” Antok said sternly.

“We freed Lotor’s prisoners and immobilized his ship!”

“You  _ know _ that’s not what I meant,” Antok growled.

“I agree with Lorena,” Allura said suddenly. “We have to get them out somehow. But we will have to get the Castle closer - their magic is strong and I will need amplify my own to contend. I can use the ship for that, but not at this range.”

“Give me a blade,” said Lorena dismissively, “and I’ll cut through their magic like silk.”

“Princess!” Coran interrupted, drawing everyone’s attention from the debate. “I hate to bother you, but it looks as if there’s a Ghweeg ship approaching.

Lorena sighed loudly. “So much for the element of surprise.”

 

*******

Running SYSCHECK……

Life support systems: suspended

Mainframe: idle

Structural integrity: 100%

Bioscan: negative

 

...

 

Running SYSCHECK………

Life support systems: working

Mainframe: busy

Structural integrity: 99%

Bioscan: positive

 

_ Hull breach detected _

_ Unauthorized organic life detected _

_ Escaped prisoner identified _

_ Wanted terrorist identified _

 

Running ATKPROTO………

 

_ Eliminate threat _

 

…

 

Bioscan: carbon-based… exothermic… 

Running subroutine facial scan……… 

Match: TAKASHI SHIROGANE 87%

Match: MATT HOLT 73%

Running OVRRD……… 

Overriding protocols

Rebooting………

 

Running HDNPROTO……...

 

_ Eliminate threat to  _ MATT  _ and  _ SHIRO

 

“No - no way!” input Matt. It registered as an expression of disbelief. Bolt-293 dispatched of the last Galra sentries and adopted a non-threatening stance before introducing itself.

 

“I have a message,” it announced, “from Sam Holt.”

“ _ Dad _ ??” input Matt.

“Yes,” Bolt-293 confirmed. “Sam Holt is your dad. I am Bolt-293. I have a message from your dad.”

“What’s the message?” Shiro input hurriedly.

Bolt-293 decrypted the file and played back the recording through its mouth-speaker.

“Matt.... uh and/or Shiro?” Bolt-293 relayed in Sam Holt’s whispering voice, “if you are hearing this message, you’ve been found by one of my Bolts - I mean, my sentries - I mean - listen: this robot will help you, so let it. I don’t have much time - ” a tense pause “ - I have to go. Galactic north. You got that Matt? Galactic north, can’t be more than a couple hundred parsecs from Earth. They’re holding me on a planet. I have to go. I lo - ”

The recording ended abruptly, cutting off the finishing syllables of Sam’s sentence. Matt was now displaying signs of emotional distress; Shiro a blank look of processing.

“Take me to him,” Matt commanded suddenly. “Take me to Sam Holt.”

“I don’t have those coordinates,” Bolt-293 replied.

Matt made a sound that contained no words but conveyed a mood of frustration.

“Pidge…” Shiro addressed Matt. Then he addressed Bolt-293. “Bolt… we need to destroy this base and we need to take you to our ship.”

“Recommend reversing order of actions,” Bolt replied.

“Right… good idea. Bolt, can you tell us how to destroy the base?”

Bolt approached the mainframe computer.

“Wait!” commanded Matt. “One more minute - the backup…”

“Pidge…” Shiro addressed Matt again, but again did not say anything meaningful.

“Just… just…… alright, okay!” input Matt, disconnecting an external memory device from the mainframe. At this cue Bolt resumed forward motion and connected itself to the mainframe with a touch. After a few seconds it announced, “We now have 3 minutes to attain a minimum distance of 4.2 kilometers from the base.”

Shiro grabbed Matt’s wrist and began moving rapidly in the direction of the hull damage Bolt had recorded earlier.

“Come on!”

Bolt followed.

 

~

 

“Hey, guys how did - wait what is - ”

“Not now!” Shiro barked, pressing the button to close the airlock. “Fly! That way!” he gestured vaguely at open space. Hunk depressed the parking brake and punched the black hole drive.

The obsidian ship shot away from the base like a rock out of a slingshot.

“Now will you tell me what’s going on??”

Shiro didn’t answer right away, but came to hover behind Hunk with his prosthetic stretching toward the control panel.

“Um… can I…?”

“Oh. Yes. Please.” Hunk ducked out of the pilot seat and sat down next to Pidge.

“So…” he began, but a snuffling noise from his left stopped him, and when he looked over, Pidge’s eyes were wide and red, and she was wiping her nose on the sleeve of her shirt like some kind of heathen. Hunk paused. “Hey, are… you okay?”

Instead of answering, Pidge turned to look at the Galra sentry which had followed them onto the Ghweeg ship, and began studying it with a focus that was intense even for Pidge. The sentry stood at attention by the airlock, where it looked almost awkward, as if it were searching for something to do. It’s attention landed on Hunk.

“Identify yourself,” it said, and Hunk bristled. Next to him Pidge stood.

“He’s with me,” she said calmly, and the sentry seemed to accept that.

“Is this like… Rover 2.0?” Hunk asked cautiously. “Mind if I uh… take a look under the hood?”

“No and yes.”

“Uhhh…”

“No it’s not and yes I mind,” she clarified curtly, then returned her focus to the robot. “Do you have anything else? Messages? Coordinates? Intel?”

“I have mapped a portion of the planet where I was built. While I was stationed here I also collected extensive data on the Galra presence in this part of the Universe.”

“Wow,” said Hunk, “that’s cool - so, hey, do - what do you know about these Ghweeg… people, because - ”

“Quiet, Hunk!”

It was sharp and pricked his pride.

“Oh… uh, okay, sorry,” he said, deflated, but Pidge’s attention was already back on the sentry, and her fingers searched along the crown of its head for the seams of plates that would give her access to its mind. Hunk turned around dejectedly to face the front of the ship again. Sunships shone in the near distance, and Hunk gazed through them, picking out little imperfections in an unbroken wall of black that was their backdrop. The flicker of a far-off star, the iridescent wisp of a nebula, a blue circle that pulled apart the dark fabric of space and spit out a little white -

“Castle!” Hunk bellowed. There was a clang and a curse from behind him and in the pilot’s seat Shiro whipped around with his Galra hand raised.

“What! What is it?”

Hunk pointed insistently to where the Castleship had just appeared. It was difficult to see now that the wormhole had closed, but he tracked it with his eyes and finger, refusing to look away.

“The Castle - the Castle of Lions - there! I just saw it come out of a wormhole! That way!”   
“Are you sure?” said Shiro, turning back to his controls - but he was already steering the Ghweeg vessel in the direction of Hunk’s pointing finger.

“I know what I saw!” Hunk cried. “Come on, before I lose visual!” 

*******

 

Pidge slipped a stumpy fingernail between sheets metal forming the back of Bolt’s sentry head. This would be the way in, if it came to that, but now that they’d found the Castle she’d have the equipment for a soft entry - through the code rather than the hardware - and that was much more her speed. Her fingers were shaky as she pulled her hand back from the cold metal, her heartbeat loud and fast in her ears. But in the buzzing shell of her body, Pidge’s mind was clear: sharpened to a deadly point that was already whittling away at a dozen possible iterations of Bolt’s programing, uncovering fragments of buried memory that might give her any information, any further clue…

“Pidge?”

She turned toward her name to see Hunk looking down. He seemed taller than usual, Pidge noticed vaguely before realizing she had slouched into a cross-legged seat on the Ghweeg ship’s floor. 

“What?”

“You coming?”

Looking between Hunk’s knees, Pidge saw white light filtering through the open door of their borrowed vessel. She jumped to her feet.

“Come on Bolt!” she barked and took off through the ship’s door into a small hangar, checking periodically over her shoulder to make sure the sentry was keeping up. She didn’t pause until she’d stepped into the hallway, bouncing on her feet as she looked left and right. She knew the way to any room from the Green Lion’s hangar, but this was a part of the ship she didn’t recognize. The soft bump of Hunk’s hips as he tried to squeeze by snapped her out of her head long enough to realize she’d been standing in the middle of the doorway.

“Pidge? This way,” Hunk said, and waited to make sure she had heard him before taking off down the left corridor at a brisk pace.

 

Shiro was already on the bridge when they arrived, apparently in the middle of debriefing, or being debriefed - Pidge didn’t care, she knew exactly where she was now. Weaving past Galra, Zzithlith, Altean, Shiro; Pidge made for her room with Bolt on her tail.

“Pidge.” It was Shiro’s voice this time, but she ignored it until metal fingers closed firm but gentle around her wrist. “Pidge? Where are you going?”

“I need to gather some equipment from my room,” she huffed in annoyance, trying vainly to twist free. “Then probably my hangar, that’s the terminal I used to  _ decode your arm _ .” These last words she punctuated with a glare, but Shiro didn’t loosen his grip.

“Lance and Keith are still being held by the Ghweeg,” he said sternly. “If this sentry really has intel on Galra forces in their area, we may be able to negotiate an exchange.”

“My  _ Dad _ is still being held by the  _ Galra _ !” Pidge spat back. “I need Bolt’s intel to find  _ him _ !”

“Pidge, please. I want to find Sam and Matt, too, but first we need to extract that intel.”

“I’ll hail the ship,” announced Allura from her podium. She nodded to Coran to open a channel. “Attention Ghweeg sunship! This is the Castle of Lions. Come in, sunship!”

Shiro’s eyes were at once pleading and reassuring as they searched Pidge’s face.

“Okay,” she sighed. “I can - ”

She was interrupted by a loud crack of feedback buzzing over the ship’s intercoms. Shiro’s searching eyes snapped to Allura.

“Princess, what’s going on?” he yelled over the growing noise.

“Some … interference. …ran, close the connection!”

A moment later the sound cut off, ringing like a phantom through the silence for another dobosh as their ears adjusted. Allura spoke.

“The magical interference was stronger than I expected,” she reported with a pinched frown. A strange air of unease crept into her bunched up shoulders and downcast eyes. “I think we’ll have to return to our original plan. Lorena?”

 

~

 

Lance was drowning in a lake of stars, still and cool. He would have prefered the ocean, but he couldn’t move. The world flashed like lightning, and his body tensed. It flashed again and he couldn’t breathe. He tried to open his eyes but they were already wide. The world flashed. He tried to move. He couldn’t breathe. His head breached the surface of the lake, and a rush of noise and light overtook his senses.

 

~

 

It was agreed that Shiro would join the Blades in recon while Pidge went to work on Bolt’s code. Hunk would hang back to support Pidge, if she would let him, and Allura and Coran to man the ship. The Zzithlith, as usual, were not of much use to anyone.

They shot over in their suits and armor because Allura didn’t want to risk sending a pod too close. The magic as they approached was strong, but not unmanageable; Kolivan and Antok, in the lead, slashing a path with their blades whenever it threatened to overcome them. Lorena kept her eyes on their movements as they maneuvered to the sunship’s main airlock. Antok pried it open while Kolivan waited at the ready for any resistance to meet them. None came.

As soon as they were inside, Lorena snatched Antok’s blade from his unsuspecting grip and took off following the whisper of Keith’s consciousness into the wide, bright dome of the atrium. She hadn’t had time for relief when Shiro had hailed them from the approaching Ghweeg ship; she hadn’t had time for talk when Pidge had stormed aboard with an enemy bot at her heels and a story falling from her lips; she certainly hadn’t had time for caution when her Marmor companions had lobbied for interrogating the sentry before launching the extraction; and she did  _ not _ have time for courtesy now.

Birds scattered from her path and the ground sparkled beneath her footfalls. Cutting through a thicket of sunset-hued flowers as tall as saplings, Lorena could finally make out the red of her son’s armor ahead.

Keith moved like a dancer, drawing his bayard from a sheath of Ghweeg flesh with a small grunt of effort. But he dropped his guard, even as another Ghwig lashed out at him with a whip of light, and in a split second Antok’s borrowed sword was flying through the air just in front of Keith’s chest. The whip fizzled and died at contact, and had buried itself in a golden pillar just beyond the skirmish. 

Lorena rushed to her son’s side. Keith was bent over the Lance, trying to rouse him from the field of light in which he lay suspended and stock-still. The light of the atrium flickered ominously. Keith was just pulling his unconscious friend over his shoulder when his bed of light winked and dimmed with the rest of the ship and deposited its patient roughly on the ground. Lance gasped awake.

Keith stumbled under the unexpected weight, but Lorena caught him by the back of his chestplate and stooped to to pull the other Paladin to his feet.

“Treacherous bitch!” An unarmed Antok came barreling into view. He gripped the hilt of his sword and wrenched it from the pillar where it had buried itself. “Take a lesser weapon if you intend to keep dropping it!” 

Lorena ignored him and draped Lance’s arm around the back of her neck so that he could stand upright. He struggled, weakly, and his eyes were wild. 

“This is bad…” he said, taking in the dim, flickering light of the once luminous atrium. “This is not good…”

A few feet away Kolivan had arrived and was corralling the Etheregent and its attendants with the edge of his blade.

“Luxite!” cried the Etheregent in despair. “No, no, my people, you’ve doomed us all…”

“Your doom is your own doing,” growled Antok, joining his leader with his own retrieved blade.

“No… I only wanted to save us, before the they drained and bottled the last of our lifeforce. My people are fading - I only - ”

“And with them fades the Empire’s largest reserve of quintessence, I suspect,” Kolivan interrupted coldly. “How long did you buy peace with your complacency? It cost many lives, and now your creditors have come to collect.”

He lifted his blade as if to strike the Etheregent down where it stood, but a metal hand staid his arm.

“What danger have we done to your people?” Shiro said to the Etheregent. It looked at him in surprise for a moment before answering.

“The luxite is dispelling my ship,” it answered, wringing its forelimbs. “If the core fails, all that will be left of this system, of my people, will be nuggets of quintessence for the Weblings.”

Kolivan jerked his arm out of Shiro’s grip but did not attack the Etheregent.

“We need to leave.”

“We’re not leaving these people to die,” objected Shiro, but Kolivan wasn’t talking to him. He was already retracing his steps to the exit, with Antok close behind.

“Maybe they’re right, Shiro,” said Keith. “They did try to kill us.” Lorena nodded to back up her son. But,

“No. That’s not the Voltron way. Princess - ” Shiro said into his mouthpiece. “Castle of Lions! This is Shiro - do you read? Allura, come in!” 

“‘Magical interference,’ remember?” Lorena reminded him with a growl. For a moment he didn’t answer, then,

“Allura? Allura! Are you there?”

Allura’s voice crackled over the comms, filtering out of Lance’s helmet too distorted for Lorena to understand.

“The Ghweeg are having some kind of… magic problem with their sunship,” said Shiro, as if responding to a question. “Is there anything you can do?”

“What? Oh, uh … yes, I see ... talking about,” said Allura, now louder and almost clear. “... connection with the quintessential …  severed…”

Shiro and Allura began discussing the logistics of saving their captors, with Shiro relaying information between the Princess and the Etheregent. Lorena stared at Keith until he felt her eyes and turned to look. Wrapping her arm around Lance’s side to shift him into a more upright position, she gestured toward the exit with her head. Keith shook his head.

“I’m not leaving without Shiro. You take Lance to the Castleship.”

“You think  _ I’m _ going to leave without  _ you _ ?” Lorena protested. Keith shrugged.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Lorena swallowed around a ball of lead looking for the words to respond, but Keith sighed and spoke again, more gently.

“Lance is injured. I need you to take him to the Castle. Please.”

Lorena narrowed her eyes.

“I’m coming right back for you,” she hissed, helping Lance stagger off as quickly as she could make him go. They hadn’t gone more than five steps when Lance dug his heels into the ground and shook his head violently.

“No - everyone is in danger - I have to - ”

“You’re in no condition to do anything but leave. Come on,” Lorena growled. But Lance twisted out of her arms with unlooked-for agility and threw himself at the pillar where the Marmor blade had struck.

“ _ Mom _ !” snapped Keith as Lance hit the ground a couple feet short of the pillar. The name shocked Lorena to stillness, and Keith stepped forward with a huff. “I told you to get him out of here, not throw him on the _ ground _ ! - ”

With a quick shake of her head Lorena turned her attention back to Lance. He was crouched at the base of the pillar now, running a hand delicately up its ornate surface until his fingers caressed the cut the luxite had left. The air flashed with strange static.

“That’s it, we’re leaving,” she grumbled, reaching for the scruff of Lance’s neck. “Keith, you too.”

“Not without Shiro,” Keith repeated, punctuating each word with a heavy pause. Lorena’s fingers closed around the back collar of Lance’s Paladin armor, but her eyes were on her son.

“If I have to drag you out of here by the  _ hair _ , I - agh!”

Lorena jerked her hand back from Lance as if electrocuted. Half a second later, the atrium went white.

 

~

 

The air in the cave was close, and it made the distant past feel closer, too. The petroglyphs ringing the rough-hewn walls of their walkway - overhead, underfoot, left and right - were faint in the dim light of Colleen’s pocket computer. A chasm opened in the ground before them.

“This is new,” said Almez. “But this cavern is where the Panther lived.”

The sound of running water filtered from below like the song of distant wind chimes. Colleen let the computer’s flashlight hover over the chasm. Cold LED light danced over the surface of a waterfall like fae and illuminated a large, empty chamber.

“How do we find her?” Rosa asked hopelessly. “Where do we even begin looking?”

“I have a telescope, stargazing equipment, at my house,” Colleen’s voice echoed through the empty room below them. “But what would we look  _ for _ …?” 

Rosa turned to Almez with pleading eyes.

“You must have something,” she said, “some connection, some way of contact…?”

Almez was silent for some time before finally speaking.

“La Pantera fue la conexión con el Más Allá,  ¿ entiende?”

“No,” Rosa shook her head. “No es la única. No puede ser.”

Colleen watched silently from the lip of the chasm, eyes searching for meaning.

“There has to be another way, besides the Panther,” Rosa reiterated. Almez looked at the ground, then knelt to pick up a rock. Running a thumb over the smooth surface, Almez studied the figures scratched on its flat underside. They looked like a teacher stooping over a group of children.

“Almez?” prompted Rosa.

“La Espada Marmórea.”

“ ¿ Espada marmórea?” Rosa repeated. “Marble sword?”

Almez nodded.

“They left us a way to contact them. I don’t know if they’ll answer, but if I can reach them, I think they will help.”

 

~

 

Allura touched the teludav controls, feeling again the residue of an oddly familiar quintessence. This, for the present, she ignored. Shiro’s stilted explanations echoed through the bridge.

“The luxite has… severed the connection with the, uh… quintessential space…?” 

“So we need to establish a new point of contact,” Allura clarified, carefully enunciating each syllable. Shiro’s voice echoed the sentence tensely and Allura’s ears strained, impatient, to pick out the Etheregent’s muffled reply.

“That’s going to take a lot of magic,” she continued, cutting Shiro off as he tried to relay the Etheregent’s answer. “How were you able to achieve this before?”

Allura felt for the magic running through her ship, trying to gauge from a distance how much power it would take to reestablish the link. The ship wasn’t any bigger than the Balmera she had healed, but with its source of quintessence severed completely…

The Etheregent’s voice was still muffled, but closer as it detailed the process of the sunships’ construction. Shiro must have handed off his helmet. Allura tried to ignore the image of his unprotected head, vulnerable amid the threat of explosion.

“We’ll have to stabilize it to buy time,” said Allura, interrupting the Etheregent’s long-winded instructions. They would need an outside source of quintessence, coincidentally, like they had been seeking when they were detained by the Ghweeg. “Magic this size must require multiple points of contact with the quintessential plane, right? If we can isolate the source of the interruption and keep it from interfering with the rest of the ship, we should be able to divert enough quintessence from the other terminals to keep the core from going critical. There’s a natural quintessence reserve not far from where we were captured.”

“Yes,” came the Etheregent’s voice. “Just as my scouts reported. I forsee only one problem: the core of this ship draws magic from both quintessential and ethereal space - this is what made it such a valuable resource to the Galra. This will compress our window of time. You will need to begin towing us as soon as the ship is stable enough to move.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Allura. “This is an Altean teludav ship. I can get you to the quintessence source in time.”

“Allura!” protested Coran from his consul. “You can’t stabilize a magic core, open a wormhole, then repair a quintessence conduit, one after the other! You’re only just recovered!”

“I know, Coran, but we have no choice and no time! The Etheregent will assist me. Now I must stabilize this ship before it takes out the system!”

Allura’s hands squeezed the teludav controls and she focused her energy through the Castle of Lions toward the core of the dying star.

The rift she found was long and thin, lengthening but not yet growing wider. Immediately she began feeling for another connection to the quintessential plane, turning her head slowly and deliberately to avoid triggering a spatial shift.

Nagging at the corner of her vision was that same strange but strangely reminiscent quintessence that had clung to her controls after the unexpected wormhole. Warily she tried to pinpoint it, to look it in the eye.

“Show yourself! What are you?” she demanded, even though she knew there wasn’t time.

“A - Allura?” the reply was hazy with interference and confusion. Allura locked onto her name and turned finally, with wide eyes, to face the whisper of a familiar figure.

“ _ Lance _ ?”

When his blue  eyes finally found and met hers they were bright with wonder and reflecting back her own troubled memories, intermixed with impressions that were intrusive and foreign, but inescapable. For a long moment they both stared immobile, captive to their shared vision……

 

~

 

Coran’s fingers tapped the dashboard next to the ship’s controls anxiously. He was ready to turn tail and flee at a moment’s notice, but he was not ready to leave half his Paladins behind in the heart of a dying star.

“Uh, hey… Coran, is this… normal?” said Hunk from Lance’s seat. He was the only human left on the bridge - as soon as the relevant data had been extracted from Bolt and transferred to the Castle’s computer, Pidge had excused herself and her sentry and left for her room. Hunk stayed, fingers on Lance’s drone controls, fidgeting through the same white-knuckled helplessness Coran was feeling. 

Grateful, despite the tremor in Hunk’s voice, for any distraction, Coran broke his vigil on the Castle’s viewscreen just long enough to glance back.

It didn’t take long for him to figure out was Hunk was asking about, but once he found he found it, his gaze lingered. Allura’s head was bowed over her controls, eyes closed as if she was dozing. But there was a soft yellow-white light radiating from her still figure. But her hair, which fell loose and bushy from the crown of her head over her shoulders and neck, fluttered around her now as if stirred by a light breeze.

“Allura?” Coran prodded, focus wavering between her and the view screen. “Princess? Is everything alright?”

 

~

 

“What - wh - wha - ” Lance sputtered, coming slowly out of his trance. 

He felt like he had been turned inside out, the people and the ship around him closer than his own mind. His head was spinning, too, and he tried to hold it still to focus on the massive aura of the ship disappearing steadily under a growing eclipse. 

He blinked around in shock, eyes adjusting to the present, and perceived that he was standing with one foot in a light the blotting darkness couldn’t touch. It couldn’t pierce the darkness, either, but existed alongside, across from, parallel to it.

“What was - what happened,” he breathed finally. Allura was struggling to focus, but as soon as her eyes cleared they snapped to Lance’s with determined intensity.

“Lance,” she said, reaching for him. Lance stuck his hand out to meet hers, but Allura’s arm passed through him, groping at the light his body was straddling. “Lance, take a breath. If this hurts, I’m sorry…”

“Wait - ”

Allura closed her fingers around empty air and the light shone through her fist, turning it translucent. The she began slowly and with great effort to drag the light back toward her.

“Whoa, hey, wh - what are you doing?” Lance squeaked. “What is that? Are you stealing my soul? Allura?”

“No,” Allura tsked, and Lance squirmed with discomfort. “Hold still.”

“I can’t - it tickles!” he complained. It - ow!”

Lance winced as Allura’s glowing hand passed through his chest, trailing a glowing tail. Allura ignored him, almost cross-eyed with concentration as she continued scooping the energy toward her. The tail of light tapered off, and Allura brought her hands together to hold the glow delicately to her breast.

“Thank you, Lance,” she said, but her eyes were dark with incertitude. 

 

*******

_ “Sir. Gurklaz from decryption has intercepted a report from the Emperor’s brat. He claims to have located the source of the energy he sensed in the Orion-Cygnus arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.” _

_ “A claim he has made to his father before. Have we any indication that this one is more credible than the last?” _

_ “Not exactly, sir. Only…” _

_ “What?” _

_ “Only a feeling and, well, an old legend. The Blue Planet, tucked between the arms of a distant spiral galaxy, the refuge our ancestors were promised…” _

_ “I would not put too much stock in a children’s tale, Antok.” _

_ “Of course, sir. But our intelligence suggests that Zarkon is already in contact with this planet, and may be preparing to send a scouting party in ahead of a full-scale attack. In my judgement, sir, it would be wise to plant our operatives in this unit.” _

_ “It is true that we must be vigilant. If there is any truth to Lotor’s claims, we must keep that information out of the hands of the Empire. I will send this message to our spies.” _

_ “Thank you, sir.” _

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is klance I p r o m i s e


End file.
